DOI 10.2466/02.21.PR0.110.2.489-500 ISSN 0033-2941
Forgiveness in relation to attachment style and consanguine marriage in iranian married individuals1
shahriar shahidi, Behnaz zaal, and mohammad ali mazaheri
Department of Psychology Shahid Beheshti University
Summary.—the aim of this study was to compare forgiveness in secure and insecure iranian married couples. Whether marriage had occurred within the family (consanguine) or not (non-consanguine) was also considered. 400 married participants completed the Family Forgiveness scale and the adult attachment Questionnaire. analysis of reported forgiveness within the marital family showed that, although there was no significant difference between secure and insecure par-ticipants in overall forgiveness, secure participants rated “reparation” and “resolu-tion” higher, whereas insecure participants rated “realization” and “recognition” higher. comparing the experience of forgiveness in the family of origin, securely attached couples not only reported significantly more overall forgiveness but re-ported more “realization” and “resolution” while forgiving. some interesting sex differences were also found, as individuals in consanguine vs non-consanguine couples differed in mean “recognition” in the forgiveness process.
When one is hurt, a salient reaction is to be offended. However, un-healed psychological wounds, unexpressed feelings, and unforgiven and unresolved issues which remain within the hurt person cause the most pain and psychological damage (enright & north, 1998). creating and maintaining warm, long-lasting, and satisfying relationships may be con-sidered the most significant aspects of loving (Lawler-Row, Younger, Pife-ri, & Jones, 2006). some researchers have argued that maintaining a long-term marital relationship requires the development of certain traits and potentials in both men and women, the most important of which is the ability to withstand as well as face and resolve mistakes and shortcomings within the family (lawler-row, et al., 2006).
Couples often manage to overcome their differences and resolve con-flicts through the process of forgiveness. It has been argued that several behavioral as well as personality factors may be strongly associated with the ability to forgive. Walker and Gorsuch (2002), for example, found that out of the Big Five personality factors, agreeableness, emotional stability, and extraversion showed the closest association with forgiveness. empa-thy has been positively correlated with forgiveness and is often included in intervention programs designed to promote forgiveness (Maltby, Day, & Barber, 2004). It seems that inclination toward forgiveness depends to a large extent on situational variables such as the strength and significance 1Address correspondence to S. Shahidi, Department of Psychology, Shahid Beheshti Univer-sity, Evin, Tehran 19839, Iran or e-mail ([email protected] or [email protected]).
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of the relationship and the situation, the quality and extent of apology re-ceived from the offender, and the desire and opportunity to seek revenge (lawler-row, et al., 2006).
One important contributing factor in forgiveness may be attachment style (Finkel, Scissors, & Burnette, 2007). It is possible that the history of personal relationships and the quality and nature of security experienced through establishing and maintaining early relationships may indeed in-fluence the way people face conflicts and deal with being hurt later in life. Bowlby’s attachment theory suggests that mental representations direct-ly affect feelings of security in children. In 1980, Bowlby suggested that every situation we face in life is affected by these mental representations which are related to the person’s beliefs, attitudes, and expectations about self and others.
Research suggests that both attachment and forgiveness follow simi-lar working models (Burnette, Taylor, Worthington, & Forsyth, 2007). Sig-nificant similarities between the two processes are based on concepts such as trust, communication, empathy, and emotional self-regulation. Further, both forgiveness and attachment seem to engage a complex set of psycho-logical changes focused on self and others (the offender or the attachment figure). For example, to forgive, the forgiver must respond with empathy and overcome negative feelings such as doubt, guilt, and anger. In threat-ening situations, these processes may block the progress of the insecure person. he may avoid facing such negative feelings or act with extreme anxiety after such experiences. On the other hand, because the need for self-protection is reduced for a securely attached individual, he may be able to draw on more useful psychological resources (such as understand-ing another’s point of view and anger regulation) as key mechanisms to control feelings of offence and hurt (Burnette, et al., 2007). Indeed, accord-ing to lawler-row, et al. (2006), securely attached individuals are more forgiving toward specific offences and show significantly more generosity and positive emotions when compared with insecure counterparts. Bur-nette, et al. (2007) believed that attached individuals are more “disposi-tionally” inclined toward forgiveness and that anger rumination is a me-diating variable in insecure individuals who have difficulty engaging in the forgiveness process. Finkel, et al. (2007) investigated the interactions among forgiveness, attachment style, and belief in destiny and found that a strong belief in destiny could reduce the potential for forgiveness in anx-iously attached individuals, but such beliefs had no significant effect on securely attached persons. moreover, they found that trust toward spous-es played a strong mediating role.
Feeney (2005) reported attachment style to be a strong predictor of long-term psychological effects of the stress experienced from perceived
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rejection. He found that anxiously insecure adults who felt rejected by their parents experienced the most psychological stress resulting in anx-iety attacks and depression when faced with threatening interpersonal situations, whereas avoidant persons experienced more psychosomatic symptoms in similar situations. Similarly, Maltby, et al. (2004) reported a significant correlation between forgiveness and positive affect, as well as life satisfaction, both of which are considered important aspects of posi-tive well-being.
The present aims are two-fold. Assuming there is a possible relation-ship between forgiveness and attachment style, the goal is to investigate whether there is a difference between married individuals who are se-curely attached and insecurely attached, in terms of forgiveness they have experienced in the past in the family they grew up in and the amount of forgiveness they report in their present relationships. it is hypothesized that the amount of forgiveness reported by securely attached individu-als would be significantly greater than in insecurely attached individuals.
Iran is a society in which family ties are still considered to be very strong. It has a traditional culture and belief system which makes con-sanguine marriages very common (sayyadpour, 2005). most consanguine (family) marriages are reported to occur traditionally between first cous-ins, and although there are no official statistics available, Yunis, El Rafei, and mumtaz (2008) have reported a high rate of consanguineous mar-riages in the Middle East, ranging from 21% in Lebanon to 58% in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Research investigating the relation between consan-guine marriages and marital satisfaction seems to offer equivocal evi-dence. Several studies in countries such as Iran (Shafienia, 2002) and Tur-key (Fisiloglu, 2001) have suggested that interference (usually indirectly) from relatives of both spouses may be considered as a fundamental rea-son for marital conflict and that consanguine marriages, because they en-courage such interference, may be a source of marital difficulty (Ghooch-vand, 2002). On the other hand, some studies have shown no significant effect of family marriages on marital success and satisfaction (Seif & Ba-hari, 2004). Recently, Mobaraki and Soderfeldt (2010) argued that consan-guineous marriages were associated with lower education, lower socio-economic status, and lower age of fertility for men and women, and seem to be a strong predictor of sexual inequality and marital dissatisfaction, as well as poor health, in women in Saudi Arabia.
In light of the above evidence and arguments, the question has been raised whether in individuals who, in addition to being related via mar-riage, are also related via blood, these blood relationships would affect patterns of forgiving behavior. Possible effects of consanguineous mar-riages on couples’ forgiveness within the family were studied.
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Method
Participants and Procedure Four hundred married individuals (200 men, 200 women) were con-
tacted in the city of Birjand in southeastern iran. the age range of partici-pants was 20 to 60 years (M = 34.5). They had been married for over two years (M = 11.3). The number of participants in consanguineous marriages was 132 (66 couples).
Participants were contacted by the second author, who went to sev-eral large governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the city of Birjand, including the Welfare organization, the local ministry of educa-tion Office, etc. These organizations had a relatively large group of mar-ried employees. Consent was obtained from each person before question-naires were handed to them. it was stressed that the information they provided would be treated as confidential and that they should answer each question personally. Each participant was to fill in the questionnaires separately in the presence of the researcher. however, in many cases the questionnaires were handed to one participant to be given to their spouse and then both questionnaires were collected after a maximum of 48 hours. Information provided by 68 participants was either void or incomplete, so those questionnaires had to be discarded. Finally, data for 400 participants were analyzed. in the present study, 140 women and 139 men were clas-sified as securely attached, and 60 women and 61 men were classified as insecurely attached (ambivalent and avoidant participants were merged). also, 132 individuals were in consanguineous marriages, and 268 individ-uals were in non-consanguineous marriages.Measures
to measure forgiveness within the family, the Family Forgiveness scale (FFs) was used. to identify attachment style, the adult attachment Questionnaire was used.
Forgiveness.—The Family Forgiveness Scale was developed by Pol-lard, anderson, anderson, and Jennings (1998) to measure forgiveness ex-perienced within the family. Five aspects of forgiveness (realization, rec-ognition, reparation, restitution, and resolution) were measured. Pollard, et al. reported an overall internal reliability of .93 for the full scale. Seif and Bahari (2004) translated the scale into Persian and used it in Iranian uni-versities, reporting an overall reliability of .85. These authors also report-ed acceptable estimates of internal consistency as Cronbach’s alpha for the five subscales for both first-generation and second-generation fami-lies. Afkhami, Bahrami, and Fatehizadeh (2007) reported overall internal consistency reliability of .85 for forgiveness in the present relationship and .84 for forgiveness in the original family in 200 couples seeking marital therapy in Yazd City in central Iran. In their sample, Cronbach’s alphas for
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the five subscales were reported as follows: .89 (realization), .76 (recogni-tion), .57 (reparation), .68 (restoration), and .51 (restitution).
The scale is a 40-item scale of two parts: the first 20 items refer to as-pects of forgiveness in the original family (parents and siblings), and the second 20 items measure aspects of forgiveness between couples. In the present study, the scores of first and second generations were not sepa-rated but added together to produce one overall score for each subscale. Each item was rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale and lower scores indi-cated more forgiveness. the maximum score was 160 and the minimum 40. Each of the five subscales was measured by eight statements. Exam-ples of each subscale are presented in Table 1.
taBle 1exaMples of IteMs on the faMIly forgIveness scale (pollard, et al., 1998)
original Family marital relationship
realization my family encouraged each other to be honest about our feelings.
I am usually aware when I have been hurtful towards this person.
recognition We were encouraged to imagine how a family member we hurt was feeling.
We believe it is important to under-stand when we have hurt each other.
reparation It was okay to admit having hurt someone in my family.
I believe it is important to ask for for-giveness when i hurt this person.
restitution I found it more acceptable in my family to admit having hurt another than to deny it.
We like to work things out between us.
resolution I felt less guilty after a member of my family accepted my apology.
i trust this person to accept my apology and put the wrong aside.
Attachment.—The Adult Attachment Questionnaire, developed by Ha-zen and Shaver (1994), has three paragraphs, each describing a closeness and attachment based on Ainsworth’s original classification of attachment styles: secure attachment and ambivalent and avoidant attachment styles. The content was designed to be suitable for measuring adult attachment style. Each respondent was asked to choose one paragraph which was closest to his experience and feeling of personal attachment. the question-naire has been used repeatedly with Iranian samples and has been shown to be a reliable tool for distinguishing different styles of attachment in the Iranian adult population (Shahabizadeh, Shahidi, & Mazaheri, 2004; Be-sharat, 2006).
resultsTable 2 presents means and standard deviations for ratings of forgive-
ness and the subscales for both spouses by their attachment style. As can be seen, there is no significant difference in overall reported forgiveness scores for men and women and for secure and insecure participants. mul-
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tivariate analysis of variance (manova) was conducted on forgiveness scores with sex and attachment style as factors. Although no sex differenc-es were found for any of the subscales, securely and insecurely attached individuals differed significantly in their mean ratings of realization and recognition. since higher scores indicate less forgiveness on these two subscales, insecurely attached individuals have reported more forgive-ness than securely attached individuals. However, as can be seen in Table 2, the securely attached group reported significantly more reparation and resolution (lower mean ratings) than the insecurely attached group, but no significant difference between securely and insecurely attached groups was found for ratings on restitution.
Table 3 shows means and standard deviations for forgiveness in the participants’ original families for both spouses according to attachment style. analysis of forgiveness experienced in the family of origin and the five forgiveness subscales by sex and attachment style using MANOVA showed that insecurely attached individuals had a higher mean rating for total score, indicating significantly less overall forgiveness in their fam-ily of origin than in the securely attached group. also, women had sig-nificantly lower ratings for total forgiveness than men (F = 3.75, p < .05;
taBle 2Means and standard devIatIons for forgIveness In MarItal
η2 = 0.03). As far as the five subscales of forgiveness were concerned, there were significant differences between securely and insecurely attached in-dividuals on ratings of realization and reparation experienced in the origi-nal family. lower scores show that securely attached individuals indicated significantly more instances of realization and reparation in their family of origin than their insecurely attached counterparts. Two significant sex dif-ferences were also found: women reported to have experienced more rec-ognition and restitution in their original family than men (F = 3.56, p < .05, η2 = 0.03, and F = 4.72, p < .05, η2 = 0.03, respectively). No significant inter-actions between sex and attachment style were found.
Means and standard deviations for forgiveness ratings by consan-guine and non-consanguine individuals are shown in Table 4. MANOVA on sex and consanguinity of marriage showed no significant sex differenc-es. No analysis for attachment style was done because there were only 20 insecurely attached couples in the consanguine marriage category. there was a significant difference between consanguine and non-consanguine individuals’ ratings on recognition, i.e., those in consanguine marriages reported more recognition in their marital relationship. No significant dif-ference was found for total forgiveness for the family of origin.
taBle 3Means and standard devIatIons for forgIveness In
dIscussIonWhen comparing ratings of forgiveness by family of origin as well
as marital relationship in married individuals by consanguinity and at-tachment style, the securely attached group reported significantly more overall forgiveness, as well as more realization and reparation, than the insecure group. However, these findings were reversed for forgiveness in their present family relations. the securely attached group reported lower mean ratings on realization and recognition than the insecurely attached group but higher means on reparation and resolution. Women rated over-all forgiveness as well as restitution in the family of origin higher than men. These results are interesting because one may infer a possible un-derlying interaction in the development of attachment and forgiveness. in this study, the ratings of securely attached individuals on forgiveness, in particular realization and reparation, were higher than ratings of insecure couples in the context of their original family. this is in line with previ-ous research done on the development of security within the family (Pol-lard, et al., 1998; Seif & Bahari, 2004). In fact, Seif and Bahari (2004) have tentatively hypothesized that within the original family, the child may ex-perience more awareness of the event which has caused offense and pain (in the form of realization) and learn more forgiveness by observing skills which include facing the painful event, accepting responsibility, and re-questing forgiveness (in the form of reparation).
However, when forgiveness is measured within the person’s present family relations, a somewhat different picture emerges. Although, as ex-pected, securely attached individuals reported more reparation as well as resolution than insecurely attached individuals, the latter’s mean ratings on realization and recognition were significantly higher than for those who scored as securely attached. the unexpected result lends support to the suggestion offered by Lawler-Row, et al. (2006), who viewed realiza-tion as an internal awareness on the part of the offender or the offended
Forgiveness and attachment style 497
of the event which has caused offense and pain and have argued that the behavior pattern of individuals with insecure attachment may be based on fear, anxiety, and mistrust toward forming relationships. hence, when facing offense, these individuals may be more under the influence of fear and anxiety than securely attached individuals and report a more intense awareness and thus a higher realization score. Likewise, this characteristic in insecurely attached individuals may lead them to evaluate the painful event more on the basis of fear and anxiety, and thus, report a higher score on recognition. in other words, although insecurely attached individuals reported experiencing less recognition and realization in their family of origin, it seems that they may be more sensitive and reactive in report-ing more intense aspects of forgiveness in their own marital relationship, namely, the awareness and the cognitive evaluation of the painful event. However, these evaluative and perceptual aspects of forgiveness may be based on fear, anxiety, and mistrust on the part of insecurely attached par-ticipants.
Walker and Gorsuch (2002) have argued that insecurely attached in-dividuals generally mistrust others. in this study, secure participants re-ported more forgiveness in their present family when reporting reparation and restitution. Pollard, et al. (1998) labeled these two aspects of forgive-ness as more practical and positive aspects of the process of forgiveness. According to their conceptualization, in reparation, people are able to face the painful situation, accept responsibility, and request forgiveness, which requires a significant amount of skill as well as courage. In resolution, they feel satisfaction and experience well-being as a result of going through the process of forgiving or being forgiven. Hence, it may be argued that indi-viduals with insecure attachment may react to others’ requests for forgive-ness or others’ acceptance of forgiveness with more doubt and confusion and not be able to truly forgive others or believe other people have, in fact, forgiven them. securely attached individuals also reported more resolu-tion in their present family than their insecurely attached counterparts. Feeney (2005) has found that forgiveness in insecurely attached persons may be superficial and even mendacious. Hence, according to Feeney, the insecurely attached individual may pretend that forgiveness has occurred but, in fact, he is merely denying the conflict and continues to ruminate on the offense. It is not surprising that insecurely attached individuals report less satisfaction and well-being as a result of experiencing the forgiveness process in their marital relationship and present family life (Feeney, 2005).
Interesting sex differences were found in the present study when an-alyzing reported forgiveness experienced in the family of origin. a very important difference may lie in the evaluation of the painful event and the feelings of remorse and regret which results from this evaluation. in-
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deed, in several studies women have shown significantly more remorse than men. For example, al-ansari (2003) found that young Kuwaiti fe-male students scored higher on traits such as shame, remorse, empathy, and sadness, whereas men scored higher on personality traits such as an-ger, blame, and contempt. Such differences may occur because of societal norms and interactions with parents during development. thus, the men may have learned to be more vengeful and resentful than the women. Badger, craft, and Jensen (1998) stated that women were more value ori-ented than men, assuming a more evaluative and critical stance than men, particularly in emotional situations.
The sex differences found in aspects of forgiveness experienced in the family of origin might also be understood in the relation between forgive-ness and empathy. In a sample of American students, Toussaint and Webb (2005) found that women scored higher on empathy than men, but no sex differences were found in reported forgiveness. However, empathy was given as a reason for forgiving more by men than by women. Likewise, exline, Baumeister, zell, Kraft, and Witvliet (2008) claimed men reported more difficulty forgiving than women, but this was because women had more empathy than men. it was found that if men developed empathy, they, in fact, became more forgiving than women.
Results showed that the difference in reported forgiveness between individuals in consanguine marriages versus those in non-consanguine marriages was only significant in one aspect of forgiveness within the present marital relationship, namely recognition. it was found that indi-viduals in consanguine marriages had a lower score on this subscale and, thus, reported significantly more recognition of the painful event requir-ing forgiveness than did those in non-consanguine marriages. therefore, it seems that the former evaluated the offense committed as less painful and were able to forgive more readily. A host of recent research articles in the field (Fisiloglu, 2001; Hamamci, 2005; Yunis, et al., 2008; Mobara-ki & Soderfeldt, 2010; Saadat & Vakili-Ghartavol, 2010) generally suggest that consanguine marriages may be detrimental not only by increasing the risk for physical and mental abnormalities in the offspring, but also as far as marital satisfaction and interpersonal relationships are concerned. Mobaraki and Soderfeldt (2010) concluded that consanguineous mar-riage was a strong predictor of sexual inequality and marital satisfaction in Saudi Arabia. In Turkey, Hamamci (2005) has argued that couples in consanguineous marriages reported more marital dissatisfaction, partic-ularly if dysfunctional relationship beliefs (such as “being close to others has negative consequences”) were prevalent. Saadat and Vakili-Ghartavol (2010) reported that parental consanguinity was a significant predictor for drug abuse in Iranian adolescents. In light of the present study’s find-ing, it seems that consanguinity may be associated with forgiveness, al-
Forgiveness and attachment style 499
though this role needs to be clarified by further research. Higher ratings on the recognition subscale of the forgiveness scale by individuals in con-sanguine marriages reflect the possibility that blood ties with the spouse’s family lead to underestimation of the offense experienced by the individ-ual. hamamci (2005) has particularly argued that such repression of feel-ings is common in consanguineous marriages, particularly when dysfunc-tional beliefs about the relationship are also present. It is suggested that future research concentrate on further elucidating the intricate nature of the relationship between forgiveness and consanguinity.
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