The development of forgiveness in the context of adolescent friendship conflict in Korea.

A developmental pattern of understanding interpersonal forgiveness is proposed and examined with 30 junior high and 30 college students in Seoul, Korea. Three questions are asked: Does the developmental sequence in understanding forgiveness relate to age? Is there a relation between the understanding of forgiveness and the degree of forgiveness offered to one's offending friend? Is there a relation between the way people understand forgiveness and how they go about restoring an actual friendship in conflict? All participants had serious and unfair conflicts with their close friends during the past 5 to 6 months. Results support a developmental sequence in Korea and the observed relation between the sequence and actual friendship restoration strategies. There was at least partial statistical support for the relation between understanding forgiveness and the participants' forgiving behaviour in real life situations. Implications are drawn for the study and implementation of forgiveness in adolescents.

Forgiveness intervention with postabortion men.

An intervention designed to foster forgiveness was implemented with postabortion men. Participants were randomly assigned to either the treatment or the control (wait list) condition, which received treatment after a 12-week waiting period. Following treatment, the participants demonstrated a significant gain in forgiveness and significant reductions in anxiety, anger, and grief as compared with controls. Similar significant findings were evident among control participants after they participated in the treatment. Maintenance of psychological benefits among the 1st set of participants was demonstrated at a 3-month follow-up.

PIP: The effectiveness of an intervention based on a process model of interpersonal forgiveness was investigated in a study of 10 US men who self-identified as hurt by their female partner's abortion decision. Participants were randomly assigned to immediate intervention (n = 5) or to a 12-week waiting period before exposure to the intervention (n = 5). Men in the experimental group showed a significantly greater increase in forgiveness as measured by the Enright Forgiveness Scale both before and after the intervention than controls (p 0.05). In addition, the experimental group's mean change scores on anxiety and grief were significantly reduced compared with controls (p 0.05). After the 12-week delay, when controls were exposed to the same intervention, they also demonstrated significant increases in forgiveness and decreases in anxiety, grief, and anger. Maintenance of psychological benefits among the men who received the intervention first was demonstrated at a 12-week follow-up. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at promoting forgiveness and emotional healing among postabortion men.

Forgiveness as an intervention goal with incest survivors.

An intervention, with forgiveness toward their abuser as the goal, was implemented with 12 female incest survivors. The women, from a midwestern city, were 24 to 54 years old, and all were Caucasian. A yoked, randomized experimental and control group design was used. The participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group (receiving the forgiveness intervention immediately) or a waiting-list control group (receiving the intervention when their matched experimental counterpart finished the intervention). Each participant met individually with the intervener once per week. The average length of the intervention for the 12 participants was 14.3 months. A process model of forgiveness was used as the focus of intervention. Dependent variables included forgiveness, self-esteem, hope, psychological depression, and state-trait anxiety scales. After the intervention, the experimental group gained more than the control group in forgiveness and hope and decreased significantly more than the control group in anxiety and depression. When the control group then began the program they showed similar change patterns to the above, as well as in self-esteem improvement.

The adolescent as forgiver.

A social cognitive developmental model of forgiveness is described and tested in two studies, the second being a replication of the first. In study 1, 59 subjects in grades 4, 7, 10, college and in adulthood were given a forgiveness interview that assessed six stages of forgiveness development, Rest's DIT measure of justice development, and a religiosity scale. As predicted, there were strong age trends for forgiveness and justice. Both forgiveness and justice were related but distinct constructs. The more one practiced one's faith, the higher one was in forgiveness stage. Study 2, with 60 subjects, replicated the above findings. The studies give strong evidence that people's understanding of forgiveness develops with age. Implications for adolescent development are drawn.

The development of the individuation process from a social-cognitive perspective.

A sequence of four developmental levels for the individuation process, from a social-cognitive perspective, was proposed from late childhood to late adolescence. Individuation is defined as the separation of the self from family. The individuation interview, Selman's self-awareness measure and the Lunzer test were administered in 4th, 7th, 10th grades and a post-high school group (N = 78). Results confirmed age increases in individuation as follows: late childhood subjects consolidate on level I, exhibiting the dominance of parental view over individual perspectives; early adolescents on level 2, demonstrating an increased self-awareness and the beginning decline of parental view; mid-adolescents, on level 3, characterized by conflicts between the recognition of the autonomous self and the parental views; and late adolescents (young adults) on level 3 and level 4, showing the ability to integrate the parental view within the self-system without losing individuality. Further, construct validation confirmed the common as well as the discriminant qualities of the individuation sequence to self-awareness and Piagetian logical development. These results support the uniqueness of the individuation construct within the social-cognitive domain.

Exploring three approaches to identity development.

Identifications from the past, current feedback from social relations, and one's own priorities combine to make up one's identity. These insights were incorporated into three separate identity development programs and administered to 57 high school seniors. Pretests and posttests included the Rasmussen Scale of Ego-Identity and a Self-Identity Social-Similarity Grid. Significant differences in change were demonstrated on the grid between the experimental groups and the control. That there were no significant changes in the Rasmussen scores highlights the diverse attempts to operationalize the many aspects of Erikson's theory. Suggestions for administering and evaluating future identity development programs are made.

Do economic conditions influence how theorists view adolescents?

Eighty-nine articles in thePedagogical Seminary and theJournal of Genetic Psychology appearing during two economic depressions and the two world wars were analyzed for their adolescent ideologies. A systematic, ideological bias in the content of these articles was found to be statistically significant. In times of economic depression theories of adolescence emerge that portray teenagers as immature, psychologically unstable, and in need of prolonged participation in the educational system. During wartime, the psychological competence of youth is emphasized and the duration of education is recommended to be more retracted than in depression. The objective, scientific nature of theory building is questioned and discussed.

A clinical model for enhancing adolescent ego identity.

A model of identity formation based on the cognitive developmental stages of social perspective-taking is described. The model assumes that identity can be achieved through cognitive strategies of considering the self in relation to one friend, one's family, the peer group, and society. Two studies were undertaken to test the model. In Study 1, 28 college students participated in a two week program in which the experimental students were asked to take the perspective of each social entity above and then to consider how the self was like and unlike these. The experimentals gained more than the controls on the identity subscale of Rasmussen's EIS. Fifty-nine college students participated in Study 2 which used a more sensitive discrepancy score measure on a revised identity scale. Discrepancy scores in an analysis of covariance indicated that the experimentals were higher than the controls at post-test and at a one month follow-up.

Coordination of perspectives: the importance of stimulus dimensionality.

An evaluation of the importance of the dimensionality of the spatial stimuli in a coordination of perspectives task is presented. It was hypothesized that using three-dimensional comparison stimuli and two-dimensional choice stimuli might result in the tapping of different cognitive skills than when both sets of stimuli are two-dimensional. Children (N = 96) aged between 5 and 12 years as well as college students (n = 24) were tested with either two-dimensional or three-dimensional comparison stimuli and two-dimensional choice stimuli. The lowest error rates for all except the kindergarten groups were found in the two-dimensional condition. It was concluded that the three-dimensional condition may have created a cognitive overload that lessened the likelihood of making correct perspective-taking judgments.

Belief discrepancy reasoning in the elderly.

The development of belief discrepancy reasoning, or how people evaluate disagreeing others, was examined with forty-four college and elderly respondents. Dogmatism and IQ measures were also administered. The results showed that the elderly were significantly lower in belief discrepancy reasoning and higher in dogmatism than the college sample, despite statistically greater IQ for the former sample and controls for education. For belief discrepancy, the elderly sample did not evidence intolerance, but rather relativism and open-mindedness toward disagreeing others. Implications for the construct validation of belief discrepancy and senescent intolerance are discussed.

Adolescent egocentrism-sociocentrism and self-consciousness.

A standardized and objectively scored scale of adolescent egocentrism-sociocentrism (AES) and a self-consciousness scale were given to 44 subjects each in the sixth, eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades and college. The AES assesses three components of egocentrism including the personal fable, the imaginary audience, and general self-focuses, as well as sociocentrism and nonsocial subscales. As predicted, the personal fable and imaginary audience declined with age. The self-focus subscale showed a curvilinear relationship with age, while, again as predicted, sociocentrism increased and nonsocial focuses declined. Adolescent egocentrism, as expected, correlated positively with self-consciousness even with age controlled. Implications for the theories of egocentrism and sociocentrism in the adolescent years are discussed.

Parental influences on the development of adolescent autonomy and identity.

Two studies were undertaken to examine parental influences on autonomy and identity development. In Study 1, 262 adolescents in seventh and eleventh grades were given Kurtines's autonomy measure, Simmons's identity measure, and Elder's questions regarding the adolescents' perceptions of their parents' autocratic, democratic, or permissive parenting styles. Study 2 was a replication with 168 subjects. Across both studies it was found that sex-role socialization is more influential for automony development than is either level of parental power or age. Both age and father's use of democracy were the most influential variables on identity development.