Comparing Compassionate Love and Empathy as Predictors of Transgression-General and Transgression-Specific Forgiveness

Abstract

For Christians, forgiveness is exhibiting Christlike love even when it seems impossible for the amount pain that the other has caused in the forgiver. However, empirical studies on the relationships between other-focused love and forgiveness are scarce. In this study, we explored the relationships between other-focused love, empathy, and forgiveness among Christian college students. Using the data from 263 students from a large private Christian university in Central Virginia, bivariate correlations between two types of forgiveness, compassionate love, and empathy were computed, and the contribution of demographic variables, compassionate love, and empathy to the prediction of transgression-general and transgression-specific forgiveness was examined using three-block multiple regression analyses. Compassionate love had significant positive associations with both transgression-general and transgression-specific forgiveness, and compassionate love predicted both types of forgiveness after controlling for age, gender, and empathy.

Keywords

interpersonal positive psychology virtues

Forgiveness is loving our enemies as best as we can even if it means suffering for those who hurt us (Worthington et al., 2006). Jesus summed up the teaching of the Old Testament by pointing out that loving God and others is the greatest commandment that Christians ought to obey (Matt. 22:36–40). Also, in Matthew 5:44, Jesus taught that Christians are to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. God Himself was identified as love, His love was demonstrated when Jesus laid His life for sinners as an atoning sacrifice (Rom. 5:8; 1 John 4:7–9), and Christians were encouraged to do the same (John 15:12–14). Therefore, forgiveness is an expression of Christlike love even when it seems impossible due to what individuals have suffered at the hands of the offenders (Cheong & DiBlasio, 2007). In this study, we examined Christ-love or agape love, which we believe to be the essence of forgiveness and its relationship with empathy and forgiveness. We use Christlike love and agape love interchangeably and also use the term “other-focused love” to distinguish Christlike love from other types of love as defined based on relationship contexts (e.g., romantic relationship).

Understanding forgiveness as other-focused love

Forgiveness occurs when the offended are willing to abandon their right to resentment, negative judgment, and indifferent behavior toward one who unjustly injured them while fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity, and love toward the offender (Enright, 2001). What is crucial to forgiveness is its process that involves the act of restructuring one’s perspective and trying to empathize with the offender, which is self-sacrificial and a gift to the one who has committed an unfair malicious act (Enright, 2001). Given the gift-giving quality of forgiveness and the process that it takes, forgiveness in its essence seems to be linked to the other-focused love (Christlike love or agape love) shown to sinners through the suffering death of Christ (Rom. 5:8). Forgiveness in its essence involves a suffering of the forgiver out of genuine care for another in spite of what the person receiving forgiveness has done to the forgiver. Forgiveness is trying to offer Christlike love to the offender as sinners are forgiven in Christ (Cheong & DiBlasio, 2007; Worthington et al., 2006; Matt. 5:44; Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13). It is that “lavish outpouring of unconditional love by God, in the person of Christ, for all people in need of redemption” that forgivers are emulating, making their forgiveness heroic and admirable (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015, p. 34). Thus, Enright (2012) asserted that the ultimate end of forgiveness is changing one’s narrative from that of resentment and hatred to that of love so that forgivers can leave behind them a legacy of love.

Forgiveness scholars in various fields saw from early on that forgiveness is linked to this other-focused love. Enright and the Human Development Study Group (1991), drawing from theoretical discussions of interpersonal forgiveness by other scholars, emphasized that forgiveness is not only about abandoning resentment but also about offering moral love (i.e., agape love) and that when helping others to forgive, therapists need to leave room for the richer goal of helping them to grow in such love. Jones (1995), a theologian, urged that Christians were once God’s enemies but reconciled to him through his forgiveness; thus, they are to love their own enemies and see that they are God’s image and beloved children. Pettigrove (2012), a philosopher, also argued that love as having cognitive, affective, and volitional dimensions of valuing the other must yield forgiveness as, in forgiving, one sees the beloved as good despite flaws, commits to the other’s well-being, and moves from resentment to positive emotions toward the offender. Interestingly, the first empirical study published in the social sciences that directly looked at forgiveness as the primary variable of interest reported that forgiveness reasoning develops with age and the highest stage of forgiveness reasoning involves unconditional love of the one who hurt the forgiver (Enright, Santos, & Al-Mabuk, 1989). However, outside the theoretical and conceptual discussions on the forgiveness–love link (in theology, philosophy, and psychology), forgiveness scientists have not given much attention to empirically investigating the role of other-focused love in forgiveness. A recent study by Kim, Enright, and Wong (2020) examined the relationship between compassionate love and dispositional forgiveness and reported that compassionate love predicts dispositional forgiveness, but the gap from the first empirical report on the forgiveness–love link to the latest one is 31 years, and to our knowledge, there is virtually no other study that focused on such a theoretical rich link for the past three decades.

In this study, we chose to examine the relationship between compassionate love (a type of other-focused love similar to agape love) and forgiveness because compassionate love has been empirically studied, albeit in isolation from the development of the forgiveness literature, and it is conceptually close to the construct of forgiveness. Compassionate love is defined by Underwood (2009) as attitudes or actions that focus on the benefit of another, even if it is at a cost to oneself. Forgiveness also is seen as an altruistic gift toward the offender out of genuine care for the person who offended the forgiver (Enright, Gassin, & Wu, 1992). The difference between the two is that forgiveness occurs in the narrower context of another’s injustice while compassionate love is not limited to anyone or any context. In other words, forgiveness is narrower in its context while compassionate love is comparably wider in its context. Also, another difference might be that forgiveness in its essence tends to be more extreme because it is offered to hard-to-love targets while compassionate love, due to its broader scope, is not (Fehr, Harasymchuk, & Sprecher, 2014). Regardless, in order to choose forgiveness, it seems necessary for the victims to look beyond their internal feelings of anger or resentment to focus on what is best for the other (McCullough, Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000). Compassionate love also is a crucial motivator for prosocial behavior (Fehr, 2010), and forgiveness is a type of prosocial behavior because it requires someone to focus on the good of someone else rather than on themselves (Tsang, Rowatt, & Shariff, 2015). Therefore, there seem to be overlaps between these two distinct concepts as both focus on the other in an altruistic sense.

Note that this does not mean that the forgivers’ desire to get well or let go of anger and move on is not important. In fact, the general population’s understanding of forgiveness is more aligned with the idea of letting go or moving on (Freedman & Chang, 2010). However, the general population’s understanding of what forgiveness is or why it typically motivates them to forgive should not be equated with what it is in its essence, that is, trying to show compassion, generosity, and love to the ones who did not do anything to earn those from the forgiver (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). In other words, forgivers might begin the process of forgiveness because of their desire to get well, but as seen in empirically supported forgiveness intervention models such as the Enright Process Model or Worthington’s REACH model, the process of forgiveness clearly is other-focused or trying to develop something altruistic toward the offender even at the forgiver’s cost (Enright, 2001; Worthington, 2003). Despite the vast amount of literature on forgiveness and compassionate love (that developed in isolation from each other) and the clear conceptual link between the two (Oman, 2011), empirical evidence for such a link is scarce.

Forgiveness and empathy

McCullough, Pargament, and Thoresen (2000) proposed that forgiveness is a prosocial behavior akin to cooperation, altruism, and inhibitory aggression responses, all of which are theorized to be elicited by the same concept, empathy. Affective empathy toward the offender has been empirically investigated as a facilitator for forgiveness, and it was found that the development of forgiveness was made possible through the development of empathy toward the offender (McCullough et al., 1997; Sandage & Worthington, 2010).

While empirical studies have shown that forgiveness may be facilitated by increasing the victims’ empathy toward the offenders, the association between affective empathy and forgiveness is less clear when empathy is measured at the dispositional level or as one’s general ability to experience others’ emotions (not specifically directed toward the offender). For instance, while the link between empathy and forgiveness was found both in men and women in Macaskill, Maltby, and Day (2002) with a stronger correlation for women, the association between forgiveness and empathy was found only in men in Toussaint and Webb (2005). Therefore, it seems possible that affective empathy (as an ability to feel/experience another’s feeling) might be causally more distal from forgiveness unless it is specifically directed toward the offender or that the forgiveness–empathy link might need to be facilitated by another factor such as relationship closeness or apology (McCullough et al., 1997). Note that in this study, we used a measure of empathy not specific to the context of injustice (i.e., dispositional empathy as opposed to empathy directed toward offenders) because first, research linking the relationship between forgiveness and dispositional empathy has shown mixed evidence and compassionate love, a main research variable in this study, is not specific to offenders.

What further complicates the investigation of the relationship between forgiveness and empathy is that the definition of empathy has been highly debated between the constructs of the ability to recognize the emotion of others (cognitive process) and the ability to experience those emotions (emotional process) (Robieux, Karsenti, Pocard, & Flahault, 2018). The most encompassing definition likely would include both components (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004). Therefore, in this study, we adopted the understanding of empathy that encompasses the ability to both recognize and experience the emotions of others, namely, cognitive and emotional empathy.

In fact, these two components of empathy, taking the viewpoint of another as well as experiencing their feelings, are recognized as important aspects of the process of forgiveness. For instance, according to the Enright Process Model, comprised of four stages and tested with a variety of populations, the third stage involves a combination of empathy, compassion, and taking on the viewpoint of another person (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). Together, these elements that encompass both cognitive and affective empathy, leading to reconstructions of the hurtful event and the offender, seem to allow for the emotional closure leading up to forgiveness.

In this study, we included empathy in examining the relationship between forgiveness and compassionate love because empathy has been studied as one of the most important factors that lead to forgiveness (see for example, McCullough et al., 1997). Also, although empathy is often specific to each individual one comes in contact with while compassionate love can be shown to any individual regardless of one’s relationship with them albeit to varying degrees (Sprecher & Fehr, 2005), studies have shown that empathy is positively correlated with compassionate love (Fehr & Sprecher, 2009) and that empathy itself facilitates the development of compassionate love, especially in early childhood (Volling, Kolak, & Kennedy, 2009). However, the two differ in that, unlike empathy, compassionate love incorporates a sense of moral direction with a desire to act for the good of the other (Oman, 2011). Empathy, or one’s ability to feel others’ emotional states and to understand their situations, does not necessarily comprise the prosocial aspect of compassionate love that highlights empathic concern or one’s feeling of concern for another’s well-being (Volling et al., 2009). Given their relationships with forgiveness and with each other, examining their unique contributions to forgiveness seemed worthwhile.

The current study

The potential relationships between forgiveness, compassionate love (though not the same as Christlike love or agape love), and empathy seem clear; however, to our knowledge, no study has ever looked at their relationships simultaneously to test whether or not compassionate love and empathy explain unique variance in forgiveness. Therefore, this study aimed at filling that gap and adding to the body of literature regarding the relationship between forgiveness, empathy, and compassionate love. We chose the Empathy Quotient (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004) as our measure of empathy as both cognitive and affective aspects of empathy are well represented in the scale as opposed to choosing a scale that measures affective or emotional empathy only. Also, given empathy and compassionate love are both examined at the general level, outside a specific relationship context, we wanted to examine forgiveness at both transgression-general (also known as dispositional forgiveness or forgivingness; see Roberts, 1995) and transgression-specific levels. Finally, given the historical link between forgiveness and Christianity through the concept of other-focused love, we have chosen Christian participants who are more likely to see forgiveness from their Christian worldview that is centered on Christ’s sacrificial love for the sinners. Our research questions among Christian college students were as follows:

Is compassionate love associated with transgression-general forgiveness?

Is compassionate love associated with transgression-specific forgiveness?

Does compassionate love predict transgression-general forgiveness above and beyond empathy and other covariates?

Does compassionate love predict transgression-specific forgiveness above and beyond empathy and other covariates?

We hypothesized that compassionate love would be positively associated with transgression-general forgiveness (hypothesis 1) and transgression-specific forgiveness (hypothesis 2). Also, we hypothesized that compassionate love would better predict transgression-general forgiveness (hypothesis 3) and transgression-specific forgiveness (hypothesis 4) when compared with empathy in our Christian sample.

Methods

Participants and procedure

The participants consisted of a convenience sample of 263 undergraduate college students, taking a psychology course(s) at a large private Christian university in Central Virginia (84% female; 16% male; age M = 19.67, SD = 2.04). See Table 1 for demographic information for study participants. We obtained IRB approval prior to conducting this study. Potential participants accessed the anonymous online survey by checking the department website that listed available research participation opportunities. We obtained informed consent through the first page of the online survey that contained detailed information about the study. For those who agreed to participate in our study, they first filled out a demographic questionnaire followed by other psychological and emotional measures that included scales of compassionate love for humanity, forgiveness (transgression-general and transgression-specific forgiveness), and empathy to be described below. To avoid any potential order effect, all measures after the demographic questionnaire were presented to the participants in a random order. All participants identified themselves as Christian. We did not collect any identifying information about the participants, and participants received a small amount of course credit for participating in this study by reporting their participation to their instructors.

Table 1.

Demographic information for participants.

Characteristic	N	%	M (SD)	Range
Age			19.67 (2.04)	18–33
Gender
Male	42	16.0
Female	221	84.0
Race/ethnicity
White	227	86.3
African American	6	2.3
Latino/Hispanic	14	5.3
Native American	2	.8
Asian	5	1.9
Other	9	3.4

Note: M connotates mean and SD connotates standard deviation.

Measures

Transgression-specific forgiveness

Participants filled out a 30-item version of the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI; Subkoviak et al., 1995; Enright et al., under review), which we used as a measure of transgression-specific forgiveness. According to Wu (2016), the EFI-30 has an alpha of .98, is strongly associated with a single-item forgiveness scale (i.e., “To what extent have you forgiven the person you rated on this scale?”) used as a construct validity check (r =.72), and is not associated with social desirability. This 30-item scale has been used in other empirical studies (see for example Erzar, Yu, Enright, & Erzar, 2018). Participants first were asked to recall their most recent experience of being hurt severely and unfairly. Additionally, they were asked who hurt them, how long ago, if the offender is living, along with a brief summary of the event. A 6-point Likert scale (from strongly disagree to strongly agree) was used to score 3 sets of 10 items addressing positive and negative: affect (e.g. “I feel _____ toward him/her”), behavior (e.g., “Regarding this person, I do or would _____”) and cognition toward the offender (e.g., “I think he or she is _____”). The last five items comprised a pseudo forgiveness measure, which measures the extent to which participants were showing a false sense of forgiveness (e.g., excusing or condoning). As recommended by the scale developers, participants who scored 20 or higher on this scale were excluded from the data analysis (Subkoviak et al., 1995). After reverse coding all negative items, the total score ranges from 30 to 180 where the higher the score, the higher the level of forgiveness toward the specific offender identified. In this sample, internal consistency reliability was high, with an alpha of .97.

Transgression-general forgiveness

Participants filled out Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS; Thompson et al., 2005), which we used as a measure of transgression-general forgiveness. This scale is a self-report measure consisting of 18 items. There are three subscales (each with six items) that address self-forgiveness, as well as the forgiveness of others and situations. Internal consistency reliability for three subscales reported was adequate with alphas ranging from .72 to .82, and construct validity when compared with other mental health variables appeared adequate (Thompson et al., 2005). For the purpose of this study, the subscale for the forgiveness of others was utilized (items 7–12). Sample questions include, “I continue to be hard on others who have hurt me” or, “With time I am understanding of others for the mistakes they have made.” Responses were based on a 7-point scale, with 1 being “almost always false” and 7 being “almost always true.” Scores for items 7, 9, 11 were reverse-coded items, and the total subscale score ranged from 6 to 42 where higher scores are indicative of higher levels of forgiveness. In this sample, internal consistency reliability for the forgiveness of others subscale in HFS was adequate with an alpha of .78.

Empathy

Participants filled out Empathy Quotient (EQ; Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004), which we used to measure an individual’s amount of empathy toward others with 40 items to measure empathy and 20 control items. Response options ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree, and the total score for each participant was computed using specific scoring instructions that assigned a numeric value from 0 to 2 for each response choice. The total score ranged from 0 to 80 with lower scores indicating less empathy and higher scores indicating more empathy. The known groups paradigm was used to check the validity of the scale, and as expected, EQ scores successfully differentiated adults with or without autistic spectrum disorder. A sample question includes “I can easily tell if someone is interested or bored with what I’m saying.” Some items are reverse scored to increase validity, including questions such as “I am able to make decisions without being influenced by people’s feelings.” In this sample, internal consistency reliability was high with an alpha of .87.

Compassionate love for humanity

Participants filled out Compassionate Love for Humanity (CLH; Sprecher & Fehr, 2005), which measures an individual’s compassionate love for those they do not know using 21 questions such as “When I see people I do not know feeling sad, I feel a need to reach out to them.” In other words, it is a measure of compassionate love toward others at the general level without any specific relationship context. Each item is rated on a scale of 1 (not at all true of me) to 7 (very true of me), and the total score ranges from 21 to 147 with higher scores indicating higher levels of compassionate love. This scale has high internal consistency reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of .95, and its construct validity is adequate showing associations with various prosocial behaviors and religiosity/spirituality and no association with impression management variables (Sprecher & Fehr, 2005). In this sample, internal consistency reliability was high with an alpha of .96.

Results

Incomplete responses and those identified as showing pseudo-forgiveness (20 or higher on the pseudo forgiveness subscale in EFI) were removed before analyzing the data. Common assumptions of normality and multiple regression were checked before analysis that appeared adequate for our planned analyses (max.skewness = |.52|, max.kurtosis = |.50|). Visual inspection of QQ plots for all study variables supported approximate normal distributions (i.e., residuals are normally distributed). Collinearity statistics for final regression models (transgression-general and transgression-specific as dependent variables) showed no multicollinearity concerns with the max VIF of 1.36, and Durbin–Watson tests supported independence between residuals (d = 2.07 and d = 1.93). Finally, visual inspection of PP plots displaying the relationship between predicted values of criterion variables and standardized residuals in the models showed no homoscedasticity issue, indicating that the amount of error in each model is approximately the same at each point of the model. For the main analysis, we ran a series of hierarchical regression analyses with each type of forgiveness (transgression-general and transgression-specific) as a criterion variable in order to examine and evaluate the contribution of demographic variables, compassionate love, and empathy in explaining each type of forgiveness separately. We utilized a step-by-step approach by first entering age and gender to control for demographic differences, and in Step 2, we entered empathy and in Step 3, we entered compassionate love. We did this separately for the two types of forgiveness.

Bivariate associations

We found a significant positive correlation between transgression-general and transgression-specific forgiveness (r = .28, p < .001), between transgression-general forgiveness and empathy (r = .30, p < .001), and transgression-general forgiveness and compassionate love (r = .39, p < .001). Thus, our first hypothesis that transgression-general forgiveness and compassionate love would be positively associated was supported. Also our second hypothesis that transgression-specific forgiveness and compassionate love would be positively associated was supported (r = .12, p < .05). Empathy and compassionate love had a strong positive relationship (r = .50, p < .001), but we did not find a significant relationship between transgression-specific forgiveness and empathy. See Table 2 for descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations for all study variables.

Table 2.

Means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and correlations between transgression-general forgiveness (HFS), transgression-specific forgiveness (EFI-30), empathy, and compassionate love.

Measure	1	2	3	4
1. HFS	1	–	–	–
2. EFI-30	.28^***	1	–	–
3. EQ	.30^***	.03	1	–
4. CLH	.39^***	.12^*	.50^***	1
M	31.51	127.75	45.64	108.40
SD	5.88	11.63	2.04	.37
Alpha	.79	.97	.87	.96

Note. HFS = Forgiveness of others subscale from Heartland Forgiveness Scale. EFI-30 = Enright Forgiveness Inventory-30. EQ = Empathy Quotient. CLH = Compassionate Love for Humanity.

p < .05. ^**p < .01. ^***p < .001.

Hierarchical regression analyses

Transgression-general forgiveness

Demographic variables and empathy accounted for 10% of the variance in forgiveness, and 19% of the variance when adding compassionate love in Model 3. Therefore, adding compassionate love in Model 3 accounted for an additional 9% variance in forgiveness scores (∆R² = .09, F _change= 27.38, df = 1, 258, p < .001). In Model 3, the beta weights for both empathy and compassionate love were statistically significant (empathy: β = .16, p < .05, 95% CI [.015, .146], compassionate love: (β = .34, p < .001, 95% CI [.06, .12]), and the standardized beta value for compassionate love was slightly higher than empathy, indicating that compassionate love had a stronger effect size when compared with empathy. Therefore, our third hypothesis that compassionate love would be a better predictor for transgression-general forgiveness than empathy was supported.

Transgression-specific forgiveness

Demographic variables and empathy explained about 3% of the total variance in transgression-specific forgiveness, and the added compassionate love variable in Model 3 helped to explain forgiveness levels more by about 1.7% when compared with Model 2 (∆R² = .02, F _change = 4.66, df = 1, 258, p = .03). In Model 3, the beta weight for compassionate love was statistically significant (β = .15, p < .05, 95% CI [.02, .44]), which was not the case for empathy. Therefore, compassionate love for humanity alone predicted transgression-specific forgiveness above and beyond empathy, supporting our fourth hypothesis. However, the amount of additional variance explained was small. See Table 3 for hierarchical regression analysis results for the regression of both types of forgiveness on other dependent measures.

Table 3.

Hierarchical multiple-regression analyses showing the relationships between forgiveness, age, gender, empathy, and compassionate love.

Predictors
Transgression-general Forgiveness (HFS)				Transgression-specific Forgiveness (EFI)
	R ²	β	∆R ²		R ²	β	∆R ²
Step 1	.01		.01	Step 1	.03		.03^*
Age		−.06		Age		−.17^**
Female		−.05		Female		−.08
Step 2	.10		.10^***	Step 2	.03		.00
Age		−.09		Age		−.18^**
Female		−.12^*		Female		−.09
EQ		.32^***		EQ		.05
Step 3	.19		.09^***	Step 3	.05		.02^*
Age		−.89		Age		−.18^**
Female		−.15^*		Female		−.10
EQ		.16^*		EQ		−.02
CLH		.34^***		CLH		.15^*

Note. HFS = Forgiveness of others subscale from Heartland Forgiveness Scale. EFI-30 = Enright Forgiveness Inventory-30. EQ = Empathy Quotient. CLH = Compassionate Love for Humanity.

p < .05. ^**p < .01. ^***p < .001.

Discussion

Though forgiveness is linked to other-focused love in its conceptualization (Cheong & DiBlasio, 2007; Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015; Worthington et al., 2006), little has been reported about the relationship between the two in the scientific literature. Also, empathy has been discussed as a crucial facilitator during the process of forgiveness and its relationship with forgiveness has been documented, but little has been studied about forgiveness in relation to both other-focused love (compassionate love in this study) and empathy. Our study was exploratory given there is no documented empirical evidence for the relationship between compassionate love and forgiveness other than Kim et al. (2020) in which compassionate love predicted dispositional forgiveness. However, because of the strong conceptual link between compassionate love and forgiveness, we hypothesized that compassionate love would be related to two types of forgiveness (transgression-general and transgression-specific) and that compassionate love would be more strongly related to forgiveness when compared with empathy. As hypothesized, compassionate love was a significant predictor of both types of forgiveness, and compassionate love better predicted both types of forgiveness when compared with empathy.

Interestingly, adding evidence to the mixed findings of the relationship between transgression-specific forgiveness and empathy, there was no significant relationship between the two in our study (Macaskill et al., 2002; Toussaint & Webb, 2005). Several explanations seem possible. First, given the majority of participants in this study were females from the USA, this finding was more consistent with that of Toussaint and Webb (2005) in which a relationship between empathy and forgiveness was shown only for male participants from a US sample than that of Macaskill et al. (2002) in which empathy was found to be related to forgiveness for both males and females from a non-US sample. Given that empathy is on average higher for females (Eisenberg & Lennon, 1983; Mestre, Samper, Frias, & Tur, 2013) and that females tend to exhibit more emotional sensitivity in the context of close personal relationships (Eagly, 2009), forgiveness that involves selflessly reaching out to the ones who have hurt them possibly require more than or a quality different from one’s ability to share another’s emotional states, which often is easier in close relationships. Second, in both Macaskill et al. (2002) and Toussaint and Webb (2005), empathy was measured at the general level as in this study, but only the affective domain of empathy was considered whereas in this study, our empathy measure comprised both affective and cognitive domains. Studies have shown that while females tend to utilize affective empathy, males tend to utilize cognitive empathy (see for example Derntl et al., 2010). Then, it seems possible that the not significant association between empathy and transgression-specific forgiveness might be due to gender and type of empathy interactions, which warrants further investigations. Third, while we used a dispositional measure of empathy in this study (to match the measurement specificity with the dispositional measure of compassionate love), forgiveness intervention studies that focused on empathy aimed to increase empathy toward the offender where a measure of state empathy was used (see for example McCullough et al., 1997; Sandage & Worthington, 2010). Fehr, Gelfand, and Nag’s (2010) meta-analysis that examined 175 studies on forgiveness concluded that state empathy is strongly linked to transgression-specific forgiveness with a mean r of .51. Therefore, no significant relationship between trait empathy toward non-identified others and state forgiveness toward a specific offender might be an artifact of the distance in the levels of measurement specificity.

Our hypothesis that compassionate love would predict forgiveness above and beyond empathy was supported. However, effect sizes were quite small for compassionate love, predicting both types of forgiveness as compassionate love when entered into the models explained additional 9% of the total variance in transgression-general forgiveness and about 2% of the total variance in transgression-specific forgiveness. First, these findings support the importance of measurement specificity indicating that dispositional measures are more highly associated with each other as shown through the stronger relationship between transgression-general forgiveness (as opposed to transgression-specific forgiveness) and compassionate love toward unidentified others. Second, there might be more proximal factors that would better explain transgression-specific forgiveness because compassionate love at the general level can be applied to any relational contexts while forgiveness is limited to the context where one is hurt by another. In fact, Fehr et al. (2010) have shown that situational factors such as intent, apology, harm severity, relationship closeness, etc. that are more proximal to the hurtful event or the offender tend to better predict one’s forgiveness of or willingness to forgive another when compared with dispositional factors (e.g., victim personality) (Fehr et al., 2010). Third, as in the case of trait versus state empathy, the latter of which was often manipulated in intervention studies to increase forgiveness, for compassionate love to better predict forgiveness, an activation of compassionate love toward the offender might need to precede examining the effect of compassionate love on forgiveness at a later time. Fourth, conceptually, forgiveness and compassionate love are closely related (as we have shown in the literature review). However, the virtue of forgiveness is to be practiced (for the purpose of maturing toward the attainment of agape love or Christlike love), not to be possessed (Enright, 2001, 2012). In this study, participants’ current level of forgiveness was considered, but as Enright et al. (1989) have shown, if unconditional love is to be expected only for a small group of more mature or skilled forgivers, the relatively weak relationship between forgiveness and compassionate love (albeit greater than trait empathy) seems to make sense.

Given the lack of literature that simultaneously looked at the relationships between forgiveness, empathy, and compassionate love, our findings fill a significant gap in the existing literature. Based on our findings, we present the following three implications. First, according to a meta-analysis on the relationship between forgiveness and religion/spirituality (R/S), R/S measures are related to both trait (r =.29) and state forgiveness (r = .15) (Davis, Worthington, Hook, & Hill, 2013). If practicing Christlike love in the form of forgiveness is an important part of Christian faith and practice, the relationship between other-focused love and forgiveness shown in this study presents a potential pathway through which Christians might experience greater forgiveness: Embodying the content and message of Christianity (which focuses on experiencing and imitating God’s love). In other words, the extent to which the Christian message of love is embodied in one’s Christian identity, greater forgiveness might ensue. Second, several empirical studies have looked at the effect of forgiveness on spiritual outcomes where forgiveness was used as a measure of spiritual growth and maturity (see for example Lampton, Oliver, Worthington, & Berry, 2006; Worthington et al., 2010). Another possibility that the findings in this study present would be measuring one spiritual growth and maturity by using measures of other-focused love (e.g., the compassionate love scale used in this study). If the goal of forgiving is to better practice God’s love shown to Christians through the Cross of Christ, perhaps measuring the kind of love that forgivers are likely to exhibit might be another way to measure one’s spirituality that matures through the practice of forgiveness. Third, the findings of this study open up a new possibility in forgiveness studies by allowing researchers to examine the effects of forgiveness interventions on other-focused love as well as the effects of intentionally fostering other-focused love on forgiveness. Various compassion-focused intervention studies have been conducted for the purpose of helping clients to heal from their wounds (Kirby, 2017); however, Christian therapists and researchers can devise ways to increase Christlike love in their clients so that the goal of clinical practice would not stop at helping clients to cope with emotional struggles but to help them to reach the transformation of the heart with Christlikeness being formed in them.

Limitations

Despite the intriguing findings reported, it is essential to acknowledge the limitations of this study. First of all, the participant demographics were not representative of the general population. The majority (84%) of participants were female, and all of the participants reported a denomination of Christianity as their religion. Though it was our intention to study Christian participants due to their potential exposure to the idea of sacrificial love in forgiveness, these demographics make the data more difficult to generalize to others in the population. Furthermore, one’s maturity in the Christian faith was not taken into consideration in this study despite the fact that some might be more committed to the Christian faith and spiritually mature than others. A recommendation for future research would be to look at a variety of religions and genders to get a more heterogeneous sample with a measure that assesses one’s level of religiosity or spirituality to account for within group variances. Regarding the age of the current sample, according to Toussaint et al. (2001), there is a significant difference between age groups in their level of forgiveness. With an age range of 19–33 years old, the generalizability of the results may not extend beyond this age bracket. Future research should also investigate age as it relates to levels of empathy, compassionate love, and forgiveness and their relationships with each other.

Second, we used self-report measures, and since forgiveness, compassionate love, and empathy are value-laden concepts, it is unclear whether or not participants felt pressured to respond in a certain way. In examining these internal qualities, perhaps, using behavioral or physiological measures might not be easy; however, researchers should continue to think about other ways of measuring these constructs as objectively as possible or may want to include a social desirability scale as a covariate.

Third, it is important to note that we used a measure of compassionate love toward humanity to make implications for Christlike love. First, compassionate love has already been widely studied in the past, and thus the compassionate love scale used in this study was easily available. Second, though Christlike love seems to be closer to the essence of forgiveness, such an extreme type of love that focuses on one’s willingness to suffer for others might not be easily captured among participants whose level of forgiveness is likely to vary. If forgiveness is a virtue that grows over time toward the perfection of the virtue, a more general measure of other-focused love (i.e., compassionate love toward humanity) might better capture forgivers on a continuum toward such an extreme type of love (Kim et al., 2020). Furthermore, compassionate love shares many aspects with forgiveness in that it involves affect, behavior, and cognition toward general others out of genuine concern and care for them while forgiveness offers the same dimensions specifically for the one who hurt the forgiver (Sprecher & Fehr, 2005). Also, the compassionate love scale used in this study does include a few items that tap into the aspect of agape love such as “I would rather suffer myself than see someone else suffer” (Sprecher & Fehr, 2005). Thus, our use of the compassionate love scale seemed justifiable, allowing us to make implications for the relationship between forgiveness and Christlike love. One potential limitation in this regard that future researchers might want to address would be that the compassionate love scale we used does not necessarily differentiate Christians from non-Christians. Therefore, we do not know to what extent what we believe to be linked to Christlike love is specifically relevant for Christians who are motivated to exhibit the same kind of love that Christ has shown to them on the Cross. Perhaps, developing a Christlike love scale for use with Christians and comparing it to the compassionate love scale used in this study might be worthwhile.

Fourth, it should be noted that the interpretation of the relationship between compassionate love and transgression-general forgiveness, also known as trait or dispositional forgiveness, should be careful because forgiveness as a virtue does not grow in a vacuum (Kim & Enright, 2016). The evidence in this sample does show that one’s self-reported disposition to forgive (transgression-general forgiveness) predicts one’s actual forgiving of another person (transgression-specific forgiveness), which is consistent with other empirical findings (see for example Koutsos, Wertheim, & Kornblum, 2008). However, it remains unclear how much one’s disposition to forgive represents one’s actual forgivingness that have matured over time in actual contexts of another’s injustice.

Finally, the cross-sectional nature of our study presents the issue of directionality between variables. Does forgiveness lead to greater love and empathy or vice versa? Future studies should use longitudinal designs to test whether or not compassionate love or forgiveness temporarily precedes the other and also use experimental designs to examine the effects of manipulating compassionate love or forgiveness on changes in the other variable. Experimental studies will not only provide further evidence for the relationship between forgiveness and compassionate love but also open up different possibilities in the forgiveness intervention efforts.

This study, despite the aforementioned limitations, was the very first study that simultaneously looked at the relationships between forgiveness, empathy, and compassionate love showing the empirical evidence that compassionate love is linked to forgiveness (more than empathy) and that one’s genuine concern and care for others (in a more general sense as in compassionate love) might be a relevant factor in understanding forgiveness as an expression of Christlike love toward others.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jichan Jay Kim

Author Biographies

Jichan Jay Kim (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Liberty University. He directs the Master of Arts in Applied Psychology program and teaches research methods, psychology and Christianity integration, and forgiveness psychology at LU.

Hannah Marie Kaplan (B.S. in Psychology, Liberty University), Mary Jo Oliver (B.S. in Psychology, Liberty University), and Nicole Shiree Whitmoyer (B.S. in Psychology, Liberty University) were active members of Dr. Kim’s 2018–2019 Daniels Team (undergraduate research program).

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