The Importance of Forgiveness

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Forgiveness is so rarely discussed in societies that it leaves the gate open for serious misunderstandings.

At least nine issues are too often confused with forgiveness, leading people to reject it.

Forgiveness is your choice when you are ready, and with the proper understanding of what it is and is not.

When I began studying forgiveness scientifically in 1985, I realized that forgiveness as a research topic had been neglected in psychological research for close to a century. Yes, there were a few journal articles on apology, but no published empirically based studies on people forgiving those who were unjust to them. As I started giving talks on forgiveness, I noticed two trends: (a) as in the psychological sciences, people in the general public rarely had conversations about forgiveness—what it is, how one goes about forgiving, and what occurs upon forgiving, and (b) when people adamantly opposed the idea of forgiving, they were misunderstanding what it actually is.

To help correct that latter point—misunderstanding what forgiveness actually is—the point of this post is to describe nine not-uncommon views of forgiving that are completely incorrect. The hope is that those who react in anger at the word “forgiveness” will first have an opportunity to see what forgiveness is not, so they can make a wise decision about whether to try it.

When people forgive, they are engaging in a moral virtue of willingly offering mercy to those who were unjust to the forgiver (Song et al., 2025). All moral virtues center on goodness. Being fair, for example, is demonstrating the moral virtue of justice in which a person willingly engages in an equal exchange, such as paying a carpenter for a newly constructed table. The goodness of forgiveness centers on having mercy on others because........

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