The Belief That God Has Forgiven You May Make You Less Likely To Apologize

But what does it mean if you believe your transgression has already been forgiven by a higher authority? Does this belief that you’re already in the clear lead to a greater sense of self-forgiveness and therefore translate to a lower need to seek actual forgiveness from the victim, or could it actually encourage you to apologize because you feel gratitude and humility?

According to a new study, those who believe God has forgiven them already experience greater levels of self-forgiveness, but this may make them less likely to actually apologize for it. However, this divine forgiveness can also indirectly raise someone’s sense of gratitude and humility, sometimes prompting them to make more meaningful apologies.

There has been a growing body of research suggests that the belief in divine forgiveness is associated with several factors related to psychological wellbeing. This includes overall life satisfaction, self-esteem, emotional regulation, and lower levels of symptoms associated with mental illness. However, less work has looked into how these ideas about divine forgiveness affects relationships with other people.

This is what inspired the latest study by Justin M. Ludwig, a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues. They wanted to understand how such spiritual experiences could influence international dynamics, especially surrounding conflict.

During their investigation, the team conducted two studies. In the first, 435 participants identifying as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim were asked to recall an unresolved time when they offended, hurt, or upset someone else. They then completed questionnaires to measure their levels of offense-specific forgiveness and self-forgiveness. One questionnaire assessed how much they believed God had forgiven them for this specific offence.

These participants then indicated how likely they were to apologize and wrote emails to the victims. The participants were led to believe the emails would be sent at the end of the study (they weren’t). After this, an independent group examined the emails for apology behavior without knowing what the participants had said in their questionnaires.

In the second study, 531 participants were recruited for a similar set of tasks. However, these participants were randomly separated into three groups after completing their questionnaires. In the first group, participants imagined that God had forgiven them and were then asked to think about how this might make them feel. The second group imagined they had not received this divine forgiveness and were asked to think on how this made them feel. The third group was a control group who were not given any specific instructions regarding God’s forgiveness.

All participants then completed additional questionnaires that measured self-forgiveness and their levels of gratitude and humility in relation to their transgression. They were then asked to suggest how likely they were to apologize to their victims, and then wrote emails in a similar way to the first study.

The results for both studies showed that those who believed God had already forgiven them had higher levels of self-forgiveness. These findings were consistent across religious backgrounds. In addition, those who believed they had been forgiven were less likely to indicate that they would apologize to their victims. This was also consistent across both studies. Those who had this sense of divine forgiveness showed less remorse in their emails, and their apologies appeared less sincere.

“Consistent with our proposed inhibiting pathway, we found that perceptions of divine forgiveness promoted greater self-forgiveness, which in turn was negatively associated with transgressors’ apology behavior,” the team writes in their paper.  

“Divine forgiveness is an underexplored construct that is important to, and experienced by, religious individuals from different faith traditions, especially Western monotheistic religions whereby divine forgiveness has a prominent theme. Corroborating a growing body of work we consistently found that the perception of divine forgiveness was associated with (Study 1) and promoted (Study 2) greater self-forgiveness.”

However, Study 2 showed evidence of a counteracting mechanism that the experience of divine forgiveness could actually increase someone’s chances of apologizing, but through a different pathway. In this instance, especially among those who were asked to imagine God had forgiven them, participants had higher levels of thankfulness, which was associated with greater humility, which in turn led to a slight increase in apology behavior.

“Together, these results suggest that the impact of divine forgiveness on transgressors’ apology behavior might operate through dual mechanisms—via self-forgiveness and via gratitude and humility—whereby both might be dynamically at play but working in opposition to each other,” the team explains.

Of course, the study has some important limitations. Firstly, the findings of the first study represent a correlation and so cannot suggest that divine forgiveness causes such changes in behavior. Secondly, the study relied on participants to self-report on their offences, which meant they were not standardized, varying in both type and severity. Thirdly, the study only focused on Western monotheistic religions, which means the findings are skewed towards these religions and may not be representative of “religion” more broadly.  

Nevertheless, the results provide intriguing insights into how beliefs in divine forgiveness can influence individuals’ responses to their own behavior and its impact on others.

The study is published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.