Massive global study links the habit of forgiving others to better overall well-being

A recent study published in npj Mental Health Research provides evidence that a general tendency to forgive others is linked to small but broad improvements in a person’s overall well-being. The findings suggest that practicing forgiveness acts as a helpful ingredient for human flourishing across many different cultures and geographic regions. By highlighting these potential benefits, the research offers a foundation for promoting forgiveness as a way to support mental, social, and emotional health worldwide.

The researchers focused on a concept known as dispositional forgivingness. This refers to the general habit or tendency of a person to forgive others across various situations and over time. When people experience an interpersonal offense, they often feel a sense of injustice that leads to unforgiveness.

Unforgiveness involves negative cognitive and emotional responses like bitterness, resentment, and anger. Over time, holding onto these negative feelings tends to harm a person’s well-being. Scientists consider forgiveness to be an adaptive coping strategy, meaning it is a healthy way to process stress and reduce the negative impact of being wronged.

A single act of forgiveness can provide a temporary boost to well-being. Developing a lasting disposition to forgive others has the potential to influence a person’s life much more broadly. However, past studies on this topic often relied on data collected at a single point in time, which makes it difficult to understand the order of events or determine cause and effect.

Past research also largely focused on specific groups within Western, educated, and industrialized nations. Scientists wanted to explore how forgivingness relates to human flourishing on a global scale. They sought to examine whether the benefits of forgiveness extend beyond mental health to include physical, social, and economic dimensions of life.

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To explore these relationships, scientists used data from the Global Flourishing Study. They examined a massive sample of exactly 207,919 individuals from 23 different countries. These samples were designed to be nationally representative, meaning they accurately reflected the demographic makeup of each country’s general population.

“Interpersonal hurts are common, and many people struggle with unforgiveness. In Wave 1 of the Global Flourishing Study, which included over 200,000 individuals across more than 20 countries, about one in four respondents reported they had ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ forgiven those who had hurt them,” explained study author Richard G. Cowden, a social-personality psychologist and research scientist with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“We used two waves of longitudinal data from the Global Flourishing Study to address a major gap: no prior work had tested, in nationally representative samples across many countries, whether the tendency to forgive others predicts subsequent well-being across a wide range of outcomes.”

The researchers measured participants at two different points in time, spaced about one year apart. During the first wave of data collection, participants answered a survey question about how often they forgave people who had hurt them. This assessment established each participant’s level of dispositional forgivingness.

About a year later, the participants completed a second survey. This follow-up measured 56 specific well-being outcomes across eight different domains of life. These domains included psychological well-being, psychological distress, social well-being, social distress, social participation, character and prosocial behavior, physical health, and socioeconomic status.

In their analysis, the researchers controlled for various background factors like age, gender, education, and childhood experiences. They did this to isolate the specific impact of forgivingness from other variables that might influence well-being.

The scientists found evidence that a tendency to forgive others was associated with small improvements in multidimensional well-being one year later. These benefits appeared across numerous specific outcomes, though the strength of the associations varied depending on the domain. Forgivingness was most consistently linked to better psychological and social well-being. People who were more forgiving tended to report higher levels of optimism, a better understanding of their life’s purpose, and higher relationship satisfaction.

“The tendency to forgive others was associated with small improvements in well-being across numerous outcomes assessed about one year later,” Cowden told PsyPost. “The results suggest forgiveness may be one helpful ingredient in supporting well-being, but well-being is shaped by many other factors as well. If we consider these findings alongside intervention studies that show forgiveness can be cultivated (Ho et al., 2024), strengthening people’s capacity to practice forgiveness more consistently (when safe and appropriate) may benefit well-being.”

The researchers also noted positive associations with character and prosocial behavior. This domain relates to voluntary actions intended to help 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 spanning multiple domains of well-being, and in some cases the strength of those associations was larger than anticipated,” Cowden said. “For example, forgiveness showed associations with some character and prosocial behavior outcomes (e.g., an orientation to promote good, gratitude) that were comparable in magnitude to its associations with outcomes more commonly emphasized in forgiveness research, such as psychological well-being indicators of happiness and self-rated mental health.”

Links between forgivingness and physical health or socioeconomic outcomes were generally much weaker. For example, the habit of forgiving others did not show a clear relationship with material security or the number of days a person exercised per week.

The data also revealed that the relationship between forgiveness and well-being differed somewhat across countries. In places like the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom, forgivingness was associated with better well-being across a large majority of the measured outcomes. In countries like Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt, the scientists found very few associations between forgiving others and later well-being.

“Although there was some evidence of association across many well-being outcomes when results were pooled across the countries, the pattern of associations differed across countries, underscoring the importance of not assuming a uniform effect of forgiveness on well-being across sociocultural contexts,” Cowden explained.

The researchers suspect that these cross-national differences might be due to broader social and cultural environments. In regions facing severe political instability or economic inequality, the positive effects of forgiveness might be overshadowed by chronic daily stressors.

Alternatively, in cultures where forgiveness is viewed as a strict social obligation rather than a personal choice, its individual benefits might be reduced. While these findings offer a broad perspective on human flourishing, there are a few limitations and potential misinterpretations to keep in mind.

The study, like all research, has limitations. Because the study only used two waves of data collected a year apart, it cannot definitively prove that forgiving others directly causes better well-being. The associations observed were also relatively small in magnitude. The study relied entirely on self-reported survey data, which can sometimes be influenced by a participant’s desire to view themselves in a positive light.

Despite these limitations, the findings have some practical implications. “From a public health perspective, the importance of any factor depends on how common it is and how much it influences outcomes,” Cowden told PsyPost. “Because interpersonal hurts are common and many people struggle with unforgiveness (which can negatively affect physical and mental health if not effectively resolved), even relatively small associations between forgiveness and well-being outcomes could matter at the population level if resources to support processing of forgiveness (when safe and appropriate) can be widely disseminated at low cost and adopted by large numbers of people.”

Future research will aim to further explore how cultural variations shape the practice and impact of forgiveness. The scientists hope to identify the specific mechanisms that explain exactly how forgiving others leads to improved health and happiness.

“These findings are helping to inform the Global Forgiveness Movement’s applied work, which focuses on disseminating evidence-based resources that support healthy responses to interpersonal hurts,” Cowden said. “One example is the self-directed REACH Forgiveness workbook, which has been rigorously evaluated in a large randomized trial and is freely available for public use (PDF). Future research will build on these findings to explore cross-cultural variation in forgiveness and its effects, potentially modifiable predictors of forgiveness, and mechanisms underlying links between forgiveness and well-being outcomes.”

The study, “Longitudinal associations of dispositional forgivingness with multidimensional well-being: a two-wave outcome-wide analysis in the Global Flourishing Study,” was authored by Richard G. Cowden, Everett L. Worthington Jr., R. Noah Padgett, Chris Felton, Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska, Renae Wilkinson, Katherine Jackson-Meyer, Zhuo J. Chen, Matt Bradshaw, Byron R. Johnson, and Tyler J. VanderWeele.