A Gender-Based Analysis of Forgiveness and Psychological Well-being among College Students

Abstract

The research problem on this topic is to examine the connection between forgiveness and psychological well-being in the group of college students, with specific reference to gender variations. Positive mental health particularly manifests during the time of young adulthood as it is a developmental stage faced with academic, social, and emotional problems. As the construct of positive psychology, forgiveness is a tool that helps people to reduce and eliminate any negative feelings about self, others, and situations that are not in their control in order to achieve emotional stability and mental health. The use of quantitative factorial and comparative research design was made. The sample consisted of 300 college students (150 males and 150 females) aged 18-25 years and was chosen from different colleges in the city of Ghaziabad. Forgiveness was measured through a Hindi translation of Heartland Forgiveness Scale that measures forgiveness of self, other people and circumstances. The Hindi adaption of Psychological Well-Being Scale was used to measure psychological well-being. Descriptive statistics, independent-samples t -tests, and two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze data. The results show that self-forgiveness, other forgiveness and situational forgiveness had a strong impact on the psychological well-being of college students. Students who showed more forgiveness levels of forgiveness indicated more psychological well-being compared to those who showed less forgiveness. Gender disparity occurred in the general psychological well-being whereby the females scored higher. But, there were no significant interaction effects on forgiveness in relation to gender indicating that forgiveness is a contributing factor to psychological well-being to a significant extent regardless of gender. The research finds that forgiveness is also a promotional variable to psychological well-being and that forgiveness-based programs should be included in educational and mental health programs among the young adults.