Recent research published in npj mental health research provides evidence that a general tendency to forgive others is associated with small but widespread improvements in an individual’s overall well-being. The findings of this study suggest that practicing forgiveness serves as a contributing factor to human flourishing across different cultures and geographic regions. By highlighting these potential benefits, this research provides a foundation for promoting forgiveness as a way to support mental, social, and emotional health around the world.
The researchers focused on a concept known as dispositional tolerance. This refers to a person’s general habit or tendency to forgive others in different situations and over time. When people experience crime in interpersonal relationships, they often feel a sense of injustice and are unable to forgive.
Feelings of unforgiveness are accompanied by negative cognitive and emotional responses such as bitterness, resentment, and anger. Over time, holding on to these negative emotions tends to undermine a person’s well-being. Scientists believe that forgiveness is an adaptive coping strategy, meaning it’s a healthy way to handle stress and reduce the negative effects of unfair treatment.
A single act of forgiveness can temporarily increase your happiness. Cultivating an enduring disposition to forgive others can have a more far-reaching impact on a person’s life. However, past research on this topic often relies on data collected at a single point in time, making it difficult to understand the order of events or determine cause and effect.
Past studies have also mainly focused on specific groups within Western, educated, and industrialized countries. Scientists wanted to investigate how generosity is related to human flourishing on a global scale. They sought to investigate whether the benefits of forgiveness extend beyond mental health to physical, social, and economic aspects of life.
To investigate these relationships, scientists used data from the Global Prosperity Study. They studied a large sample of exactly 207,919 people from 23 countries. These samples are designed to be nationally representative, meaning they accurately reflect the demographic composition of each country’s general population.
“While hurt in interpersonal relationships is common, many people struggle with feelings of unforgiveness. In the first wave of the Global Thriving Survey, which surveyed more than 200,000 people in more than 20 countries, about one in four respondents said they had ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ forgiven someone who had hurt them,” explained study author Richard G. Cowden, a social personality psychologist and research scientist at Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program. in epidemiology from Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health.
“We used two sets of longitudinal data from the World Prosperity Study to address a major gap. No previous study had tested whether the tendency to forgive others predicts subsequent well-being across a wide range of outcomes in a representative sample of many countries.”
The researchers measured participants at two different time points, about a year apart. In the first stage of data collection, participants answered survey questions about how often they had forgiven someone who had hurt them. This assessment established the level of tolerant nature of each participant.
Approximately one year later, participants completed a second survey. The follow-up study measured 56 specific well-being outcomes across eight different areas of life. These areas include psychological well-being, psychological distress, social well-being, social distress, social participation, personality and prosocial behavior, physical health, and socio-economic status.
The researchers controlled for various background factors in their analysis, including age, gender, education, and childhood experiences. They did this to separate the specific effects of forgiveness from other variables that may influence well-being.
Scientists found evidence that the tendency to forgive others is associated with modest improvements in multidimensional well-being after one year. Although these benefits emerged across many specific outcomes, the strength of the association varied by domain. Forgiveness was most consistently associated with improved psychological and social well-being. Those who were more forgiving tended to report higher levels of optimism, a better understanding of life’s purpose, and higher relationship satisfaction.
“The tendency to forgive others was associated with modest improvements in well-being across a number of outcomes assessed approximately one year later,” Cowden told SciPost. “While these results suggest that forgiveness may be one factor that helps support well-being, well-being is also shaped by many other factors. When we consider these findings alongside intervention research showing that forgiveness can be cultivated (Ho et al., 2024), strengthening people’s ability to practice forgiveness more consistently (when safe and appropriate) may benefit well-being.”
Researchers also noted positive associations with personality and prosocial behavior. This domain is associated with voluntary actions aimed at helping others, such as showing love, practicing gratitude, and being oriented toward promoting good in the world.
“The tendency to forgive others was associated with outcomes across multiple domains of well-being, and in some cases the strength of the association was greater than expected,” Cowden said. “For example, forgiveness showed associations with several personality and prosocial behavioral outcomes (e.g., an orientation toward promoting goodness and gratitude). This was comparable in magnitude and association with outcomes more commonly emphasized in forgiveness research, such as psychological well-being indicators of happiness and self-rated mental health.”
Associations between tolerance and physical health or socio-economic outcomes were generally much weaker. For example, the habit of forgiving others showed no clear relationship with material security or the number of days of exercise per week.
The data also revealed that the relationship between forgiveness and happiness varies slightly across countries. In countries such as the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom, generosity was associated with greater happiness across most measured outcomes. In countries such as Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt, scientists found little link between forgiving others and subsequent happiness.
“When results were integrated across countries, there was some evidence that many well-being outcomes were related, but the pattern of associations varied across countries, highlighting the importance of not assuming a uniform effect of forgiveness on well-being across sociocultural contexts,” Cowden explained.
Researchers believe these cross-national differences may be due to broader social and cultural environments. In regions facing severe political instability and economic inequality, the positive effects of forgiveness can be overshadowed by chronic everyday stressors.
Alternatively, the personal benefits of forgiveness may be diminished in cultures where forgiveness is seen as a strict social obligation rather than a personal choice. Although these findings provide a broad perspective on human flourishing, there are some limitations and potential misconceptions to keep in mind.
As with all research, this study has limitations. Because this study only used two waves of data collected one year apart, it cannot conclusively prove that forgiving others directly leads to better well-being. The observed associations were also relatively small. This study relies entirely on self-report survey data, which may be influenced by participants’ desire to view themselves positively.
Despite these limitations, this finding has several practical implications. “From a public health perspective, the importance of any factor is determined by how common it is and how much it influences the outcome,” Cowden told SciPost. “Because interpersonal hurt is common and many people struggle with feelings of unforgiveness (which can negatively impact mental and physical health if not effectively resolved), even a relatively small association between forgiveness and well-being outcomes could become important at a population level if resources to support the processing of forgiveness (when safe and appropriate) are widely distributed at low cost and adopted by large numbers of people.”
Future research aims to further investigate how cultural differences shape forgiveness practices and impacts. Scientists hope to identify the specific mechanisms that explain exactly how forgiving others leads to improved health and well-being.
“These findings are helping to inform the applied work of the Global Forgiveness Movement, which is focused on disseminating evidence-based resources that support healthy responses to interpersonal hurt,” Cowden said. “One example is the self-guided REACH ‘Forgiveness’ Workbook, which has been rigorously evaluated in a large randomized trial and is freely available to the public (PDF). Future research will build on these findings to investigate cross-cultural differences in forgiveness and its effects, modifiable predictors of forgiveness, and the mechanisms underlying the association between forgiveness and well-being outcomes.”
The study, “Longitudinal Associations of Generous Temperament and Multidimensional Well-Being: An Analysis of Two-Wave Results Across the World Prosperity Study,” was authored by Richard G. Cowden, Everett L. Worthington Jr., R. Noah Padgett, Chris Felton, Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska, Renae Wilkinson, Katherine Jackson-Meyer, and Zhuo J. Chen, Matt Bradshaw, Byron R. Johnson, and Tyler J. Vanderweele.
