SELF-FORGIVENESS IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS: THE IMPACT ON THE PERPETRATOR AND THE RELATIONSHIP

Two studies were conducted to determine how self-forgiveness and other perpetrator reactions influence the perpetrator and the victim after a romantic relationship transgression. Study 1 used a longitudinal design to determine how guilt and shame predicted the trajectory of self-forgiveness, self-excusing, and self-punishing in participants who had recently been the perpetrator of a romantic relationship transgression. Those experiencing higher guilt at baseline had higher self-forgiveness starting out and those lower on guilt starting out had a greater change in self-forgiveness. Those experiencing more guilt at baseline experienced less change in self-forgiveness over time. Shame was not significantly related to self-forgiveness over time. Those experiencing higher shame at baseline were higher in self-excusing starting out. Those lower on shame starting out had a greater increase in self-excusing over time and those experiencing more shame at baseline experienced less increase in self-excusing over time. Guilt was not significantly related to self-excusing over time. Neither guilt nor shame predicted change in self-punishment over time. In Study 2, couples came into the lab and wrote about the same offense. One participant wrote from the perspective of the perpetrator and the other from the perspective of the victim. Victims reported their forgiveness and perception of their partners’ reactions to wrongdoing. Perpetrators reported their perception of their partners’ feelings of forgiveness and their feelings of self-forgiveness, self-excusing, and self-punishing. Both members reported their relationship satisfaction and commitment. Overall, self-forgiveness by the perpetrator was not a strong predictor of perpetrator satisfaction or commitment. Victims were more satisfied and committed when perceiving self-forgiveness from their partner, even though their partners’ self-forgiveness did not have an effect. Self-forgiveness only positively predicted perpetrators’ satisfaction and commitment when participants reported decisional self-forgiveness. Victims’ perceptions of the perpetrators’ self-excusing and perpetrators’ self-punishing negatively predicted victim commitment and satisfaction. Victims’ perceived perpetrator self-punishing positively predicted perpetrators’ commitment. Perpetrator perceived victim forgiveness and victim forgiveness both positively predicted satisfaction for the perpetrator and the victim. This suggests that perpetrators’ perceptions of victim forgiveness may be more important for the perpetrator than the victim actually forgiving them

Temporal Self-Appraisals across the College Experience

This page contains data and materials that accompany the manuscript "I've Grown So Much": Temporal Self-Appraisals across the College Experience. The manuscript has been submitted for publication in The Journal of Social Psychology

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

Many Labs 3 is a crowdsourced project that systematically evaluated time-of-semester effects across many participant pools. See the Wiki for a table of contents of files and to download the manuscript

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences—conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Many Labs 3: Evaluating participant pool quality across the academic semester via replication

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved