Executive Functioning and Forgiveness

Turns out that people with higher executive function have a significantly larger increase in their forgiveness of original transgressions than those with low executive functioning, but only when the offense is most severe. Individuals with higher executive function also showed lower levels of rumination. They found that the level of an individual’s rumination explained a significant portion of the association of executive function and forgiveness.

Executive function is made up of a collection of higher order cognitive processes, some of which allow an individual to multi-task, think abstractly, and inhibit potentially inappropriate behaviors.

The study was conducted by the Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands and the findings released in 2009 and presented in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 98, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 119-131.

Special thanks to Brainna Schuyler for the summary of this study.

And if you're in Red Bank, NJ on January 10th, you can attend a lecture on forgiveness by Michael Posnick. That's where I got this sweet picture.