Book Description

This study examined the effect of the forgiveness intervention comparing with relaxation training on psychological variables of forgiveness, state anxiety, trait anxiety, state anger, trait anger, anger-in, organization-based self-esteem and job satisfaction among white-collar workers who reported that they had experienced or were experiencing injustice issues as work stress in the workplace by using a randomized experimental design. Forty-one white-collar workers in England and Wales of the United Kingdom participated in this study. All participants were randomly assigned into two groups: the experimental group under the forgiveness intervention condition, and the control group under relaxation training condition. Participants in each group self studied and practiced the assigned training tasks under the motivation and guidance of the researcher on a weekly basis. Participation lasted four months including twelve weeks of intervention and four weeks of follow-up after the intervention, and participants responded to online survey questionnaires at the pre-test, post-test and follow-up. It was hypothesized that: from the pre-test to post-test and from the pre-test to follow-up, the forgiveness group will show greater increase of forgiveness, organization-based self-esteem and job satisfaction than the relaxation group, and greater decrease of state anxiety, trait anxiety, state anger, trait anger, and anger-in than the relaxation group. Results showed that there was no significant group difference after controlling pre-test scores as the covariate by using ANCOVA, but significant group differences were identified by using t test: the forgiveness group demonstrated a significantly greater increase in organizational-based self-esteem and greater decrease in state anger than the relaxation group from the pre-test to post-test; and the forgiveness group demonstrated significantly greater increases in forgiveness, and significant greater decrease in trait anxiety and state anger than the relaxation group from the pre-test to follow-up. The results also showed that participants who completed the study had significantly higher pre-test mean scores in forgiveness than those who dropped out after the pre-test. The results implied that the forgiveness intervention worked more effectively with significant improvements in forgiveness, trait anxiety and state anger than relaxation training.