Revista Internacional de Saúde Mental e Psiquiatria

A psychological study of wisdom in relation to forgiveness

Noreen Choudhri

This study was designed to evaluate the influence of Wisdom and Gender on the measure of Forgiveness in a sample of educated old individuals. Since the role of Wisdom in the determination of various positive psychology attributes has greatly been studied earlier, it was thought that Wisdom may also contribute significantly in the determination of Forgiveness in the elderly individuals, who face problems of aging in the later life. A 2x2 factorial design was employed, where two independent variables (viz. Wisdom and Gender) were entertained, each varying at two levels (i.e., High Wisdom and Low Wisdom, Male and Female). Thus, four treatment groups were formed, each consisting of 30 subjects, making a total of 120 respondents in all. The subjects were administered the standardized tests of Three-dimensional wisdom scale (3D-WS) and Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS). Results of the study disclosed that Males have higher Forgiveness compared to their Female counterparts. Similarly, older adults with High Wisdom have obtained significantly higher Forgiveness mean scores than older adults with Low Wisdom. Furthermore, no interaction was found to be significant; it suggests that both Gender and Wisdom have not jointly influenced the measure of Forgiveness in the older aged individuals. It was also found that Wisdom is positively correlated with all the measures of Forgiveness and the relationship is statistically significant. By and large Wisdom appears to be an important contributing factor for Forgiveness in old age because most of the measures were significantly influenced by Wisdom.