Tendency to Forgive 
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**Summary**

The tendency to forgive is an individual disposition to forgive other people after being hurt or treated 
unjustly by them and was measured in SOEP in 2010, 2015, and 2020.  

**Theoretical Background**

The individual tendency to forgive is the tendency to either maintain or overcome one’s own anger or 
resentment after being personally injured: “the TTF is a simple, four-item scale designed to assess the 
extent to which individuals typically experience or engage in forgiveness when they have been 
wronged by others” (Brown, 2003). The scale is not designed to measure the process of forgiving 
(how or when one forgives), but to measure individual differences in the outcome of this process (to 
what extent an individual typically forgives). The tendency to forgive is understood as an individual 
disposition and not as a process linked to specific situations or actions. As a construct, the tendency to 
forgive shows similarities to other constructs such as revenge, feelings of aggression, desire for 
reconciliation, and negative reciprocity. For the research, it is of interest to study the consequences the 
individual tendency to forgive on mental health and life satisfaction. Furthermore, the individual 
tendency to forgive may play a role as a strategy in decision conflicts and dilemma situations. 

**Scale Development**

The scale is the German translation of the already validated Tendency to Forgive Scale. Information 
on the validity of the original scale can be found in Brown and Phillips (2005). The scale was used for 
the first time in the SOEP in the 2009 SOEP pretest (representative random sample of the German 
population, N = 1.007) and displays, given the typical characteristics of population surveys (low 
number of items, high heterogeneity of survey respondents), satisfactory reliability and factorial 
validity (Weinhardt & Schupp, 2011). Based on the satisfactory results of the 2009 SOEP pretest, the 
Tendency to Forgive scale was included in the main SOEP survey in 2010.  

**References**

*Brown, R., & Phillips, A. (2005). Letting bygones be bygones: Further evidence for the validity of the 
tendency to forgive scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 627-638.*

*Brown, R. P. (2003). Measuring individual differences in the tendency to forgive: Construct validity 
and links with depression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 759-771.*

*Weinhardt, M., & Schupp, J. (2011). Die Messung individueller Vergebungstendenz im SOEP: 
Skaleneigenschaften der deutschen Version der Tendency-to-Forgive-Scale. Berlin: DIW Berlin.*

**Items**
To what degree do the following statements apply to you personally (In welchem Maße treffen die 
folgenden Aussagen auf Sie persönlich zu): 

	1. I get over it relatively quickly when someone hurts my feelings (Ich komme relativ leicht darüber hinweg, wenn jemand mich emotional verletzt). 
	2. When somebody has wronged me, I often think about it for quite a while (R) (Wenn jemand mir unrecht getan hat, denke ich oft lange darüber nach). 
	3. I tend to bear grudges (R) (Ich bin tendenziell nachtragend). 
	4. When other people wrong me I try to just forgive and forget (Wenn andere mir unrecht tun, versuche ich einfach zu vergeben und zu vergessen). 

Scale: 1 (Does not apply to me at all / Trifft überhaupt nicht zu) to 7 (Applies to me perfectly / Trifft 
voll zu) 

**Items and Scale Statistics**

.. csv-table::
   :file: csv/29_tendencytoforgive.csv
   :header-rows: 1
   :class: longtable
   :widths: 2 2 2 1 1 2 1