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Efficacy of Psychotherapeutic Interventions to Promote Forgiveness: A Meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Nathaniel G. Wade
William T. Hoyt
Julia E. M. Kidwell
Everett L. Worthington, Jr.
All your life you’re told forgiveness is for you. But we’re never told why it’s for you. It means you’re working on owning your life.
Shani Tran
Therapist and Founder, The Shani Project
Forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world. We heal the world by healing each and every one of our hearts. The process is simple, but it is not easy.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
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Efficacy of Psychotherapeutic Interventions to Promote Forgiveness: A Meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Nathaniel G. Wade
William T. Hoyt
Julia E. M. Kidwell
Everett L. Worthington, Jr.
NO. of participants
Date
2013
Type of Evidence
Type of Paper
Empiricism
open access
Yes
No
sample size
124

Objective: This meta-analysis addressed the efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to help people forgive others and to examine moderators of treatment effects. Method: Eligible studies reported quantitative data on forgiveness of a specific hurt following treatment by a professional with an intervention designed explicitly to promote forgiveness. Random effects meta-analyses were conducted using k 53 posttreatment effect sizes (N 2,323) and k 41 follow-up effect sizes (N 1,716) from a total of 54 published and unpublished research reports. Results: Participants receiving explicit forgiveness treatments reported significantly greater forgiveness than participants not receiving treatment ( 0.56 [0.43, 0.68]) and participants, receiving alternative treatments ( 0.45 [0.21, 0.69]). Also, forgiveness treatments resulted in greater changes in depression, anxiety, and hope than no-treatment conditions. Moderators of treatment efficacy included treatment dosage, offense severity, treatment model, and treatment modality. Multimoderator analyses indicated that treatment dosage (i.e., longer interventions) and modality (individual group) uniquely predicted change in forgiveness compared with no-treatment controls. Compared with alternative treatment conditions, both modality (individual group) and offense severity were marginally predictive (ps .10) of treatment effects. Conclusions: It appears that using theoretically grounded forgiveness interventions is a sound choice for helping clients to deal with past offenses and helping them achieve resolution in the form of forgiveness. Differences between treatment approaches disappeared when controlling for other significant moderators; the advantage for individual interventions was most clearly demonstrated for Enright-model interventions, as there have been no studies of individual interventions using the Worthington model.

Research
Non-Region Specific
Mental Health Professionals
Supporting Research
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