ABSTRACT
While there is now more empirical research on forgiveness, the factors that lead one person to be more forgiving than another are still not well understood. Personality is one obvious source of individual differences that influences how forgiving an individual is, but it does not provide the full explanation. Mullet, Neto, and Riviére (2005) reviewed 27 published studies that examined the relationship between personality and forgiveness, and concluded that personality accounted for between 20 and 30% of the observed differences in forgiveness of others and forgiveness of self. This leaves a considerable amount of variance still to be accounted for in our search to understand the factors that influence how forgiving an individual is. The research reported here goes beyond personality variables to examine how our models of reality may affect how forgiving we are. The contentious issue of measuring forgiveness of situations is also examined.
