A cross-cultural study of the construct of forgiveness: Britain, Greece and Cyprus

Examined cultural and gender differences in the construct of forgiveness and willingness to forgive. The Scobie Forgiveness Scale was administered to 564 undergraduate students in Britain, Greece, and Cyprus. Demographic factors included age, religion, church attendance, and religiosity. The results of a comparative factor analysis of the British and Greek-speaking samples indicate a number of significant differences in response to some of the focus phrases. The underlying structure and components were similar in both the forgiver and forgiven mode, but the variable load and composition showed a number of differences, suggesting that the effect of culture is profound. A MANOVA of the 3 national groups, for the forgiveness components and mode (forgiver or forgiven) revealed no significant gender differences for the different groups. In general, most differences were between the British and Cypriot samples, and relatively few between the British and Greek and the Greek and Cypriot groups