Forgiving someone for a transgression may make it easier to forget the incident, a new study finds.
We've often been told to forgive and forget but when you're on the receiving end of a wrongdoing, it may not be easy to forgive, leave alone forgetting. A new study found that people who can forgive someone for a transgression find it easier to forget the incident.
"It is well established that learning to forgive others can have positive benefits for an individual's physical and mental health," said Saima Noreen, lead author of the study in a press statement. "The ability to forget upsetting memories may provide an effective coping strategy that enables people to move on with their lives."
For the study, a group of participants were made to hear some hypothetical wrongdoing scenarios. They were then asked to rate each wrongdoing on whether they would forgive the misdeed or not, if they were the victim.
About 2 weeks later, the same scenarios were played to the participants again. This time, each scenario reading was accompanied by a neutral keyword and participants were made to memorize this pairing.
In the next part of the test, researchers provided the participants with the neutral keywords, written in either red or green. The participants were asked to recall the paired scenario if the keyword was in green and to avoid thinking about the paired scenario if the keyword was in red.
Researchers found that participants easily forgot scenarios when instructed to, if they had forgiven the misdeed in the first session. However, when they had not forgiven the misdeed, they found it difficult not to think about the scenario when instructed.
"This research is only coming into fruition, and it's likely that the relationship between forgiveness and forgetting is bi-directional and far more complex over longer periods of time," Noreen said. "We hope that, in time, new fields of enquiry may combine forgetting- and forgiveness-based interventions that might, in turn, give rise to powerful therapeutic tools that will enable people to "forgive and forget" more effectively."
These findings suggest that once a transgression has been forgiven, it may be psychologically easier to forget. Yet, the results also can be viewed from the perspective of cognitive science. Overcoming strong negative emotions toward someone who did us wrong and resisting the impulse for vengeance are two traits considered to be functions of executive control. Past studies suggest that executive control is also involved in the ability to forget. It might be this cognitive mechanism, then, that links forgiveness and forgetting.
The Bible suggests something similar to the findings of this study. Though the phrase "forgive and forget" is not found in the Bible, there are many scriptures that tell people to "forgive one another." The inability to really forgive is often due to a false concept that "forgetting is forgiving". Forgetting without forgiving is actually an act of denial, according to a Bible study blogpost. However, the act of forgiving makes it easier to forget.
Findings of the study were published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.