Confidentiality and forgiveness
Typically, any violations on any relationship warrant forgiveness. However, when confidentiality is broken, can forgiveness be used to mend the relationship? Confidentiality is the thread to the very fabric of creating healthy relationships. Do non-Christians harbor resentment more than Christians in interpersonal relationships? Forgiveness is not a miracle patch to cover the holes within the garment of relationships. This research will explore whether Christians forgive more than non-Christians or vice versa, when confidentiality is broken.
Relationship Types
There are two types of relationships. Involuntary relationships encompass families. Involuntary relationships are those which have practical choices to maintain their current relationships in the present and future (Hess, 2000). Father and son, mother and daughter, grandparents and grandchildren are types of involuntary relationships because they were born into the relationship. The other type of relationship is voluntary. Voluntary relationships are woven with a romantic interaction, marriage or friendships, which are voluntary (Myers, 2001). Regardless of the type of relationships, each person's needs are interwoven with confidentiality and can affect each other's opinions and attitudes.
When confidentiality is broken, what is the basic motivation of the offended person? The offended person may have premeditated motivation to avoid contact or pursue revenge against the wrongdoer. Intentional motives occur in most circumstances. This occurs when the victim feels the actions of the wrongdoer are harmful (McCullough et al., 1997). Forgiveness has interpersonal and intrapersonal elements, which provide a change in the direction of the offender (McCullough et al., 2000). Whether the offended is a Christian or not, the bottom line is the outcome of their relationship, therefore, will there be forgiveness?
Forgiveness Explained
Enright and Coyle (1998) suggest forgiveness is one who has experienced and unjust grievance and chooses to discard resentment and offers clemency to the wrongdoer. Frequently, in therapy, clients are reluctant to the idea of forgiveness. Many clients believe forgiveness requires them to forget about the incident and patch up the relationship with the offender (Kearns & Fincham, 2004). Forgiveness requires a change and it can be considered as a process rather than an act (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000).
Christians are asked to tolerate each other and to forgive the grievances. The command is given to Christians, to "forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13, New International Version). Even though forgiveness may seem to be some type of release of hurt, this release may be in the form of anger (Davenport, 1991), resentment (Enright and the Human Development Study Group, 1996) or revenge (Cloke, 1993). Forgiveness takes place by a relational environment and the disposition of the relationship (McCullough et al., 2000). Finally, some clients correlate forgiveness with characteristics of being a weakness. It becomes a sense of fear and if forgiveness is granted, then it gives permission to the offender to hurt them again (Kearns & Fincham, 2004). There is a need for forgiveness research because of the various opinions.
Forgiveness Research
In the early 1980's the word forgiveness was hardly used in therapy or in research. According to Christianity Today, $10 million was given for the "Campaign for Forgiveness Research" (Thomas, 2000). In 1998, the John Templeton Foundation awarded grants for research in the area of forgiveness. Some of these areas covered are as follows: challenges to forgiveness in marriages, secular and spiritual forgiveness for alcoholics and forgiveness in organizational downsizing (Thomas, 2000). Forgiveness research has allowed integration of forgiveness in counseling (DiBlasio & Proctor, 1993). However, there is a need for further investigation, since earlier research models on forgiveness provided limited information for therapists (McCullough & Worthington, 1994). In the mental health field, forgiveness research has established the significance of forgiveness in therapy and has become commonly well-known for its importance to be a part of therapy. (Harris & Thoresen, 2005). Prior to 1985 there have only been five studies on forgiveness and into the present day, forgiveness research has amplified (Fincham, Jackson & Beach, 2005). Research into the areas of forgiveness has been able to produce techniques and forgiveness models. Many different forgiveness models have been employed for relational interventions (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2000). Most of these models define the processes and deliberate conclusions to forgive (Enright et al., 1996). One main and highly regarded model of forgiveness is the Enright (1996) model.
Dr. Enright's model has 20 processes, which are clustered into four different segments. His model is flexible to allow disagreements to help individuals process forgiving. The uncovering phase is a discovery phase which allows individuals to identify their anger and emotional pain. The decision phase allows individuals to consider the cost of their behaviors if they choose not to forgive and the rewards if they choose to forgive. The work phase is learning empathy while grieving through the pain of their grievances while structuring thoughts about the offender. The final stage is the outcome stage which leads individuals to a revelation; they are obtaining emotional reprieve by forgiving their offender. This model would be used in this proposed research study of Christians and non-Christians of who forgives more when confidentiality is broken.
Therefore, more research is needed in the area of Christianity and the effect's forgiveness has on Christians. In the area of Christianity, it is unknown if Christians forgive more than non-Christians. Forgiveness may have limited facets in relationships that do not continue, but provides benevolent and negative aspects in close relationships that do continue (Worthington, 2005). There are different opinions about forgiveness and how clients handle forgiveness and these opinions warrant more research into the field of forgiveness among Christians and non-Christians. Forgiveness research has just begun and is still in its infancy stage. Most research in peer related journals consist of forgiveness in therapy and some are beginning to look at forgiveness and its relationship to those who offer and receive it.
Theoretical Article Reviews
Three main theoretical article reviews have a common theme which seems to be relevant in most forgiveness research projects. Those articles which have been chosen do not have any topics of forgiveness and Christianity. Christians and non-Christians encompass families and individuals that come to therapy in order to restore those relationships which are at a stalemate (Shontz and Rosenak, 1988). Regardless, if one is a Christian, there are many different research articles determining how forgiveness works in interpersonal and personal relationships. Gauging whether people can forgive, there are theoretical articles that have reviewed the different aspects in forgiveness. Upon reviewing these peer-related articles, there is a lack of research within the effects of forgiveness within the Christian community. Do Christians forgive more than non-Christians? Majority of the articles sample the following different populations: victims coping with the distress of abuse (Davenport, D.S., 1991), involuntary associations or relationships with detested partners (Hess, J.A., 2000), and university students that sustained interpersonal grievances (McCullough et al., 1997).
Although there are articles which lack the study of which group provides more forgiveness, there seems to be three main themes that appeared to be relevant. These themes are as follows:
- Defining forgiveness. What it is and what it isn't and how it relates to clients.
- Theoretical structures and models for therapeutic practices.
- Exploration and inspection of forgiveness involvement within therapy.
Finally, research within an interpersonal relationship group is important to understand the importance of forgiveness, whether they are Christian or not.
Purpose for this Research
The proposed research involves a study of Christians and non-Christians involved in interpersonal relationships. It is hypothesized that Christians in interpersonal relationships, who have had their confidentiality broken, will forgive their wrongdoers more often than those who are not Christians. The outcome should prove forgiveness through therapy is somewhat easier for a Christian than a non-Christian, especially when confidentiality is broken. In this research the independent variable studied will be confidentiality among Christians and non-Christians, while the dependent variable is forgiving the wrong doing.
Understanding why Christian's forgive more than those who are not, creates an importance of understanding the models of forgiveness. Instead of being provoked to avoid communication and interaction and working through a model of learning to forgive provides a potential future research of forgiveness in any relationship.
This proposed research can add to the forgiveness literature. Christians are distinguished to be forgiving in nature. The Amish is considered within communities as a Christian race, which forgives those who trespass against them. The Amish forgave the man which intruded onto their community and killed several children in 2006. Forgiveness within Christianity needs to be differentiated from acceptance or making an allowance to condone the wrong. Finally, among scholars, there is a disagreement that forgiveness doesn't involve reconciliation within relationships (Freedman, 2000). From a non-Christian view there appears no reconciliation, but with the Christian community there appears to be reconciliation involvement.
METHOD
Participants
Liberty University is the melting pot of Christians and non-Christians. Liberty University is an evangelical Christian university located on the east coast in the state of Virginia. The participants range in age from 18-year-olds to those who are mid 60's. These ages will comprise of employees, undergraduate students, graduate students and the students. Students will include online and campus students who are enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs. Participants will be asked from an initial email to take a 15-minute online survey. These email addresses will be based upon those who are employed and students enrolled at the university. This will create a pool of various ages, locations, genders and variation of demographic proportions.
The sample of the population would be 50% Christians and 50% non-Christians. If not enough non-Christians are obtained through the university then the outside population of Lynchburg would be used. The survey can also be mailed out to the local residents in order to capture more data, until the goal sample population goal of 50% is met.
Measures and Providers
Demographics of the participants will be obtained to ensure the accuracy of measuring. The survey will measure the responses by taking a snapshot of information of age, sex, level of education and geographic locations. After answering these questions the participants will enter the main phase of the survey through circumstantial questions.
The questions which are open-ended, will engage their interpersonal and personal relationships. These relational questions will determine if their confidentiality was broken. One question included within this survey is as follows: Describe a time you had an interaction with a family or non-family members that violated your confidentiality that you placed in them within the last six months. Survey takers will then entail how this violation was handled within the relationship. It will provide detailed information as to the strategies or methods, attitudes and behaviors, which enabled them to provide or not to provide forgiveness. These answers will be grouped according to their frequency of themes.
Five student researchers (second year students) and one licensed professor (20 years experience) will be primary providers and keepers of the internet information. Student researchers compiling the information will be supervised by a licensed professor of counseling. Student researchers will correlate the sample data and analyzed by scales and correlating themes.
These answers will help provide information if there is more forgiveness offered with Christian relationships or non-Christian relationships. A forgiveness measurement scale would provide an in depth measurement of emotions applied within the interpersonal and personal relationships (Berry, et al, 2005). The measurement of this scale looks at the thoughts and understandings of being able to forgive within the emotional relationships. This scale is a tool that enables the analyzer to interpret and compare the levels of dedication and conviction through correlations between the emotions and the ability to forgive.
Several other scales will be used to determine the validity of the relationships of the respondents. The commitment scale has been 6-items which measure the levels of commitment within the relationships (Myers & Weber, 2004). Another type of scale is the emotional regulation scale that measures relational levels of empathy and forgiveness (Macaskill, Maltby, & Day, 2002). Empathy must be Tendency to Forgive Scale, is a measure of dispositional forgiveness that takes empathy into consideration (Brown, 2003). Answers from the survey will be helpful in measuring forgiveness being offered or not offered by Christians and non Christians when confidentiality is broken.
Part of the survey will use Kanz (2000) Conceptual Forgiveness Questions, which encompasses 23 questions that examined an individual's beliefs in relation to forgiveness. These questions are broken into different categories: forgiveness and religion, concepts and misconceptions of forgiveness, and beliefs about forgiveness. This will measure the beliefs of those participating in the survey.
The last instrument contains six sub-scales containing 60 items and this is an instrument which was developed by Enright (2000). The Enright Forgiveness Inventory (Enright et al., 2000) assesses the behavior and cognition affect towards the offender. There is a point scale represented by each question that is answered and a score that is high signifies the victim's level of forgiveness.
This proposed research designed was comparative and no variables were manipulated. The survey online consisted of one questionnaire, while proposing a possible use in a potential research study in the future. For the conclusion of the 15 minute questionnaire, the participants were given gratitude for their contribution. An opportunity was given to request the finale results of the proposed research study.
Results
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this study is to examine forgiveness between two different groups. It is hypothesized that Christians, who have had their confidentiality broken, will forgive their wrongdoers more often than those who are not Christians. There is evidence in therapeutic literature of the benefits of forgiveness in relationships and in therapy. A limited understanding exists in how forgiveness in therapeutic involvement works.
Forgiveness is moderately recent in publications of psychotherapeutic journals. A large amount of literature is focused on hypothesizing interventions on forgiveness in therapy. As more growth and research are being executed, it is practical to expect more research and literature in the area and outcomes of forgiveness research.
One limitation in this proposed study is the definition of the word Christian. Many different definitions are made based upon a person's perception of their view of Christian. Therefore, questions will need to be made and asked to bring out a definition that can be defined by this research. Once it is defined then the accuracy will improve of determining what are a Christian and a non Christian.
Researchers will need to explain the connotation of forgiveness more clearly. There are varieties of forgiveness. Two common types of forgiveness are ambivalent and complete. Ambivalent exists when the forgiver encounters negative and positive emotions towards the wrong doer. Complete exists when there is a lower negative emotion and a much higher positive emotion to the wrong doer (Fincham, Hall, and Beach 2005). It is essential to define and to clarify authentic forgiveness and insincere forgiveness. It is significant to expand the theoretical models. It is important to understand the temperament factors of social-cognitive that impact the competence to forgive (McCullough, 2000).
References
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