The devil in the details: Individual differences in unforgiveness and health correlates

In interpersonal relations, transgressions are almost inevitable. In response to such transgressions, unforgiveness is widely considered to be harmful to victims' well-being. However, little empirical work has explicitly examined this proposition. In the present research individual differences in experiences of unforgiveness were examined. Analyses revealed that unforgiveness is not invariably associated with adverse health correlates. We found a positive relationship between emotional-ruminative forms of unforgiveness and adverse psychological health. However, victims who maintained an unforgiving stance in the form of unforgiving evaluations did not experience the same adverse health impacts. Results further show that the relationship between emotional-ruminative forms of unforgiveness on reduced psychological health is mediated by negative affect and trait anger. These findings suggest that individual differences in victims' experiences of unforgiveness are important for understanding whether unforgiveness predicts psychological health problems.