Dispositional forgiveness and externalizing and internalizing problems: Junior and senior high school students

Outside of Japan, over the last decade, an increasing amount of empirical research has been done on the topic of forgiveness. The purposes of the present study were to develop a dispositional Forgiveness Scale, and to investigate the relations among dispositional forgiveness and externalizing and internalizing problems in junior and senior high school students in Japan. In Study 1, in which the participants were 574 junior and senior high school students, the dispositional Forgiveness Scale was developed. Factor analysis revealed that the dispositional Forgiveness Scale consisted of 3 factors : "forgiveness of others," "negative forgiveness of self," and "positive forgiveness of self." In Study 2, in which the participants were 553 junior and senior high school students, the reliability and validity of the dispositional Forgiveness Scale were investigated. The results confirmed that the dispositional Forgiveness Scale had high reliability and validity. In Study 3, in which 556 junior and senior high school students participated, the relations among dispositional forgiveness, externalizing problems (physical aggression and relational aggression) and internationalizing problems (depression and anxiety) were investigated. Correlational and multiple regression analyses indicated that dispositional forgiveness was negatively related to both externalizing and internalizing problems. These results suggest that forgiveness leads to a reduction in part of externalizing and internalizing problems.