GRANTING FORGIVENESS OR HARBORING GRUDGES: Implications for Emotion, Physiology, and Health
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Introduction
Social relationships are always met with interpersonal offenses that become significantly harmful to people’s mental and physical health. Most unforgiving responses deteriorate and affect people’s health, while forgiving responses are regarded to enhance a healthy being. Interpersonal transgressions directly or indirectly implicate a person’s health in a substantial occurrence. Researchers have associated the physiological implications of the unforgiving responses to blames, anger, and hostility, which transforms to more significant and hurting experiences. Health problems related to this kind of transgression includes coronary heart diseases as well as premature deaths. This paper explores evidence that shows how forgiveness and grudges have been associated with multiple problems.
Reviews
Relationships between those who harbor grudges and those who forgive after an interpersonal confrontation are considered of significant impacts on people’s physiology, emotion, and health. Scholars suggest that physiological responses are essential aspects of emotional experiences, memories, and imagined responses. According to Witvliet & Vrana in 2000, responses rely differently depending on one’s emotional skills and how they think or believe. A person’s facial expression is one of the indicators that strongly foretell when a person is on either of the two-dimensional valence; positive reaction or adverse reaction. A negative response to a physiological response is expressed with aroused anger and emotions, muscle tension, skin conductance, fast heartbeat, and blood pressure. On the other hand, positive responses are always welcomed with joy, good feeling, and happiness.
Interpersonal transgressions cause emotionally laden experiences more so when one is hurt by someone who is so close and one you trust. Occasionally, such hurts lead to sadness and confusion, and when they are triggered more, painful experiences become too hard to bear. This is where grudges are created. Bitter resentments, vengeance, and hostility take control of one’s emotions. Negative feelings cast out the positive ones, making a person be swallowed by their bitterness and some sense of injustice. Forgiving responses are taken in two dimensions; one is when a person develops humanity traits and empathizes with the offender while the other is granting forgiveness. Similarly, unforgiving acts have been categorized into two dimensions; one is how people, after the insightful transgression, rehearse the painful experiences and harbor grudges.
Witvliet declared that people, when hurt, keep on thinking of the hurting memories, and due to this, they end up getting negative emotions and adverse psychological effects. Research shows eminently that those who forgive because of their religious context hurt the most than those who forgive out of unconditional love. Similarly, people who hold grudges and nurse them tend to perpetuate negative emotions and contain negative emotions that always bring them health effects, blame, and lasting anger because it is perceived as their own choice and commitment to remain angry and nurture vengeance.
Human beings are created to be empathetic. Rather than judging deed, one must show compassion and evaluate reasons as to what might have caused the offender to react in a certain way. Witvliet posited that empathy reduces the intensity of the negative valence of hurt. By forgiving and exploring options and reasons, it creates and introduces more positive valence, stresses less, and free mind.
Lastly, granting forgiveness involves a personal decision to end transgressions and put on positive emotions. Most people find forgiveness a hard decision while others; forgiveness to them is shaped by their cognitive, emotions, and behavior variations. Although a person decides to forgive, it does not mean that the offender’s actions have been minimized or ignored; rather, it involves one’s personal decision to let go of the negative feelings within them and adopt a merciful attitude of goodwill. Considering the benefits, positive minding only eases one’s life by clearing the wounds, minimizing vengeful emotions, yield physical and psychological advantages, reduces stress, reduce problems with health, and improve physical performance.
Methods Used
Witvliet, in 2000, used emotional imagery as a physiological buffer to measure the extent to which unforgiving responses lead to erosion and intensification of emotional reactivity. Similarly, a test of forgiving responses was carried out in the study to measure the extents in which forgiving responses buffered up good health and promoted healing as an art of emotional reactivity. Different participants were subjected to a standard within-subject repeated measure design that allowed us to closely compare the physical effects of adopting forgiving responses and unforgiving responses.
All participants used the same scripts to test the unforgiving response and forgiving for internal validation. External validation test required each participant to use his or her own life experience on the forgiving and unforgiving interpersonal transgressions. Basing our focus on health, emotions, and psychological relevance, the measure of imagery effects reflected the sense of self-report perceptions on each participant’s emotions. This was scheduled to assess real-life considerations on thoughts, feelings, and physical responses that vary between them.
Procedure
Each participant had to finish the session by identifying various implications he or she experienced in the script. A clear phase of imagery study had to be drafted in systematic manipulated order to balance the responses across participants. Tones and signals were used to measure and engage different effects. After each trial, participants would range their responses based on positive to negative and the effects as high or low. Different control measures were recorded.
Results
Self-reporting took the headlights, with most primary offenders being close family members, friends, and partners. Most categorized offenses were trusting betrayals, lies, insults, and rejection. Test results reflected that during the unforgiving stance, participant’s imagery shown more of them being negatively valent. Similarly, during forgiving imagery, most of them recorded a great empathy and forgiveness. Most implicates were considered higher in valence during the unforgiving imagery; hence greater effects lay on the base of the unforgiving valence than forgiving.
Discussion
When a victim forgives the offender, anger and emotional hurt feelings are reduced hence less heart rate and blood pressure associated with health problems. Chronic distress such as anger, blame, vengeance, and hurt feelings may be reduced by forgiving others more frequently. On the other hand, chronic unforgiving and grudging behavior may increase health risk by prolonging anger and increasing cardiovascular reactivity and emotional arousal. Emotional anger has been associated with heart disease caused by aggregation of platelets increase of blood pressure (Schwenkmezger & Hank, 1996).
Reference
Witvliet, C. V. O., Ludwig, T. E., & Laan, K. L. V. (2001). Granting forgiveness or harboring grudges: Implications for emotion, physiology, and health. Psychological science, 12(2), 117-123.