LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES: THE STABILITY OF FORGIVINGNESS TENDENCY
The Stability of Forgivingness Tendency
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51200/sapj.v13i1.6037Keywords:
Forgivingness, Personality, Stability, Age, ChangeAbstract
Over the past decades, forgivingness has been hypothesized as a stable personality trait. Despite this early assertion, little to no evidence supports this claim. This study investigated the stability of forgivingness tendency over time, seeking to answer whether an individual’s disposition to forgive is stable or changes over time. Moreover, it aimed to determine the age trajectory at which an individual’s forgivingness tendency becomes relatively stable. The purpose of the study was to test the Personality Stability Theory of McCrae and Costa (1994) and Caspi et al. (2005) in terms of forgivingness. This study used a quantitative, cross-sectional design, and data were collected via an online survey. Descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and post-hoc tests were used in data analyses. The results showed a change in an individual’s dispositional forgivingness between early and middle adulthood, while no changes were observed between middle and older adults. Forgivingness, therefore, becomes stable upon reaching middle adulthood.
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