Forgiveness, Religiousness, and Life Satisfaction: An Empirical Study on Turkish and Jordanian University Students

Author/s: Ali Ayten, Hamza Ferhan

DOI: 10.12738/spc.2016.1.0006 

Year: 2016 Vol: 1 Number: 1

Abstract

Forgiveness has been examined in the science of psychology and its sub-departments like psychology of religion with the focus on the interrelations between personality, attachment, health, religiosity, and so on. In this article, forgiveness has been investigated in the context of its relation with religiosity and life satisfaction. The main aim of the study is to delineate the role of religiosity on forgiveness and life satisfaction. Furthermore, the relationship between forgiveness and demographics (gender and age) and the effect of cultural differences on forgiveness have also been investigated in this study. A further goal of this paper will be to describe the effect of forgiveness on life satisfaction. In order to discern the abovementioned goals, the Interpersonal Forgiveness Scale and Life Satisfaction Scale were applied to a sample of 295 students from Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan, and Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey. According to the findings, female students had higher means in “vengeance,” a sub-department of forgiveness, than male students. Female students were more likely to be satisfied with life than male students.

Keywords
Religiosity, Life satisfaction, Interpersonal forgiveness, Comparative study