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Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry
Vol. 34:1 (2024) ► pp.161–190

Forgiveness through Writing

Exploring the effects of narrative completeness, emotional expression, and physiology on forgiveness

ORCID logo | University of Delaware
| University of Connecticut
| University of Connecticut
| University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
| University of Washington

Research has identified that writing can help individuals find forgiveness for their romantic partners in the wake of relational transgressions, but little is known about the actual narrative components that bring about changes in forgiveness. The current study sought to investigate the narrative components that contribute to month-long changes in forgiveness for romantic partners who have recently experienced a relational transgression. It also sought to uncover emotional and biological mechanisms that can help account for the associations between narrative components and forgiveness outcomes. The results revealed components of narratives that may both contribute to an increase and decrease in forgiveness over the course of one-month. Additionally, emotional expression and testosterone were identified as potential mediators and moderators of the associations between narrative components and changes in forgiveness.

Keywords: forgiveness, relational transgressions, expressive writing, narrative completeness, testosterone
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Communication tasks of forgiveness
    • Making sense of transgressions
    • Emotion expression and transgressions
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Procedure
      • Prescreening procedures
      • Laboratory procedures
    • Narrative completeness coding
    • Measures
      • Demographics
      • Testosterone (T)
      • Linguistic word count
      • Forgiveness
  • Results
    • Preliminary analyses and covariates
    • Primary analyses
  • Discussion
    • Making sense of transgressions and forgiveness
    • Managing transgression-related emotions and testosterone
    • Implications for research on narrative completeness
    • Limitations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.20017.cro
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