The relationship between self-forgiveness and human flourishing: Inferring the underlying psychological mechanisms

The study aims to examine the role of Self-Forgiveness in shaping the Human Flourishing of the adults. Two hundred fourteen participants (18 to 30 years) comprising 100 males (Mean Age = 22.15(1.61)) and 114 females (Mean Age = 22.00(1.95)) were chosen for the study. Self-forgiveness (Mudgal & Tiwari, 2017a) and Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (Keyes, 2005) were used as the tools. Self-forgiveness comprises Realization & Reparation, Guilt, Attribution and overall self-forgiveness (sum of the first three) while Human Flourishing consists of Hedonic and Eudaimonic (Social plus Psychological) Well-Being. The aggregate of Hedonic and Eudaimonic is overall Human Flourishing. The findings suggested no gender differences in Self-Forgiveness of the participants. Conversely, gender differences were observed in all the dimensions of Human Flourishing in favour of males. Irrespective of gender, Realization & Reparation was positively correlated with Hedonic, Social, Psychological and Eudaimonic Well-Being as well as Human Flourishing except for Guilt and Attribution that showed small positive or negative correlations. Irrespective of gender, Overall Self-Forgiveness correlated positively with all the dimensions of Flourishing. Gender and Realization & Reparation emerged as the significant predictors accounting for significant variance in all the dimensions of Flourishing while Guilt and Attribution did not. The findings suggested that remorse, easy acceptance of wrongdoing, repairing the relationship with self and others, ability to minimize negative emotions towards self, monitoring others’ positive behaviours and acknowledgements of valued and close relationships were the psychological mechanisms that may underlie the predictive strengths of self-forgiveness in regulating flourishing.