Trait Forgivingness Scale

Abstract

The Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS) is a widely utilized psychometric instrument developed by Jack W. Berry, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Lynn E. O’Connor, Les Parrott III, and Nathaniel G. Wade (2005) to assess an individual’s dispositional proneness to forgive interpersonal transgressions across relationships, contexts, and time. While state forgiveness measures (such as the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory) capture emotional and decisional shifts regarding a discrete offense, the TFS measures forgiveness as a stable, cross-situational personality disposition. The scale comprises 10 self-report items evaluated on a 5-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), with five negatively worded items reverse-scored to attenuate acquiescence response bias. Psychometric evaluations across diverse community and collegiate cohorts demonstrate robust unidimensionality, adequate to high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .74 to .80), and notable temporal stability (test-retest reliability coefficients exceeding .75 over multi-week intervals). Construct validity is well established: the TFS exhibits robust positive associations with Agreeableness, affective empathy, and restorative emotional regulation, alongside substantial negative correlations with Neuroticism, trait anger, hostile attribution bias, and chronic vengeful rumination. The scale serves as an efficient, theoretically grounded metric in clinical psychology, personality assessment, marital therapy, and health psychology research examining the cardioprotective and stress-buffering correlates of forgiving dispositions.

Keywords

Trait Forgivingness Scale, dispositional forgiveness, emotional forgiveness, interpersonal transgression, vengeful rumination, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, psychometrics, coping, stress-and-coping model

Authors

The Trait Forgivingness Scale was developed through a collaborative program of research led by prominent scholars in counseling psychology, personality theory, and positive psychology:

• Jack W. Berry, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Dr. Berry’s empirical scholarship focuses on psychometrics, guilt, empathy, and interpersonal forgiving processes.
• Everett L. Worthington, Jr., Ph.D. — Commonwealth Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA. A preeminent global authority on the science and clinical practice of forgiveness, developer of the REACH Forgiveness intervention model.
• Lynn E. O’Connor, Ph.D. — The Wright Institute, Berkeley, California, USA. Specializes in evolutionary psychology, altruism, guilt, empathy-based pathogenic beliefs, and clinical outcomes.
• Les Parrott III, Ph.D. — Center for Relationship Development, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington, USA. Clinical psychologist specializing in relationship dynamics, marriage stability, and personality assessment.
• Nathaniel G. Wade, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA. Researches group psychotherapy, religious and spiritual coping, and the efficacy of structured forgiveness interventions.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS) is to provide a concise, psychometrically sound operationalization of trait forgivingness—defined as an individual’s enduring, global disposition to forgive interpersonal hurts and transgressions across multiple relational spheres, severity levels, and social domains. Prior to the formal systematization of forgiveness constructs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, clinical and social psychological researchers often conflated state-level forgiveness (reactions to a singular, identified transgression) with trait-level forgiveness (the overarching personality tendency to release resentment and relinquish retaliation across situations).

In clinical psychology and psychotherapy outcome studies, the TFS is routinely administered to assess baseline client dispositions and monitor shifts in chronic grievance holding. Dysfunctional grievance maintenance and unresolved interpersonal anger frequently exacerbate mood disorders, generalized anxiety, borderline personality organization, and substance misuse. In health psychology and behavioral medicine, trait forgivingness serves as a key predictor of cardiovascular reactivity, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis functioning, immune competence, and sleep quality. Individuals low in trait forgivingness demonstrate protracted sympathetic nervous system arousal driven by recurrent rumination over interpersonal injuries.

In research contexts, the TFS enables investigators to disentangle personality-level forgiveness from relationship-specific factors, such as relational commitment, offender apology, or perceived transgression severity. By isolating the dispositional propensity toward forgiveness, researchers can examine how core personality traits interact with environmental stimuli to facilitate or inhibit restorative pro-social behaviors.

Psychological Construct

The TFS measures trait forgivingness as an omnibus, unidimensional personality attribute. In contemporary personality science, trait forgivingness represents the general tendency to pronounce decisional forgiveness and undergo emotional forgiveness when injured by conspecifics, rather than harboring chronic bitterness, seeking vengeance, or permanently severing interpersonal bonds.

Decisional versus Emotional Trait Tendencies

Within Worthington’s dual-process architecture, forgiveness encompasses two distinguishable components: decisional forgiveness (a cognitive, behavioral intention to treat the offender as a person of worth and refrain from retaliation) and emotional forgiveness (the gradual psychophysiological replacement of negative, unforgiving emotions—such as resentment, hostility, bitter rumination, and fear—with positive, other-oriented emotions like empathy, sympathy, and altruistic love). The TFS items capture both facets, tapping cognitive decisions (e.g., Item 4: “I try to forgive others even when they don’t feel guilty for what they did”) and lingering emotional resentment (e.g., Item 7: “Even after I forgive someone, things often come back to me that I resent”).

Trait Forgivingness versus Related Constructs

To conceptualize the construct accurately, trait forgivingness must be distinguished from several adjacent psychological concepts:

• Forgivingness vs. State Forgiveness: State forgiveness is episodic and target-specific. Trait forgivingness reflects the baseline threshold required to trigger state forgiveness and the rate at which state-level emotional forgiveness unfolds.
• Forgivingness vs. Forgetting: Forgetting is a memory phenomenon. While Item 5 colloquially references being able to “forgive and forget an insult,” empirical research indicates that genuine forgiveness involves emotional transformation while episodic recall of the event often remains intact.
• Forgivingness vs. Condensation, Excusing, or Condoning: Condoning minimizes the offense or denies moral culpability. Trait forgivingness presupposes that a boundary violation was recognized as wrong, unjustified, and hurtful, but the victim deliberately relinquishes hostility nonetheless.
• Forgivingness vs. Reconciliation: Reconciliation involves restoring mutual trust and relational contact. Forgiveness occurs intrapsychically within the individual victim, irrespective of whether reconciliation is safe or feasible.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the Trait Forgivingness Scale is grounded in the Stress-and-Coping Model of Forgiveness articulated by Worthington (2006) and the affective-cognitive personality framework established by Berry, Worthington, et al. (2005).

The Stress-and-Coping Framework

Within this framework, interpersonal transgressions are conceptualized as acute relational stressors that challenge an individual’s appraisals of safety, justice, and self-worth. When harmed, victims experience unforgiveness—an enduring stress reaction consisting of anger, hostility, resentment, fear, and vengeful motivation. Individuals vary widely in how they cope with this stress reaction. Trait forgivingness represents an adaptive, emotion-focused coping disposition. High-trait-forgiving individuals utilize proactive cognitive reframing, perspective taking, and empathic attributions to down-regulate unforgiving emotions. Conversely, low-trait-forgiving individuals rely on maladaptive coping mechanisms, primarily vengeful rumination and behavioral retaliation, which reinforce chronic emotional distress.

The Five-Factor Model Integration

Berry et al. (2005) integrated trait forgivingness directly into the Five-Factor Model of personality. Empirical analyses confirm that trait forgivingness occupies an intersection between high Agreeableness and low Neuroticism. Agreeableness provides the prosocial, empathic, and cooperative motivational substratum necessary to abandon grudge holding. Emotional stability (low Neuroticism) buffers against ruminative looping, hypervigilance to perceived social slights, and affective lability. The TFS functions as an explicit manifestation of this personality nexus, quantifying how these broader temperament domains translate into specific responses to interpersonal hurt.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Trait Forgivingness Scale has been corroborated through extensive empirical investigations spanning diverse community, clinical, and undergraduate samples.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Convergent validity is supported by strong, statistically significant correlations with established dispositional and state forgiveness inventories. In the foundational validation studies by Berry et al. (2005), the TFS demonstrated substantial positive correlations with the Mauger Forgiveness of Others Scale ($r = .65$ to $.72$) and the Heartland Forgiveness Scale ($r = .60$ to $.68$). Furthermore, individuals scoring higher on the TFS consistently exhibit higher scores on state-level forgiveness measures, such as the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations (TRIM-12 and TRIM-18) inventory, demonstrating lower revenge ($r \approx -.45$) and avoidance motivations ($r \approx -.38$) following actual transgressions.

Trait forgivingness as assessed by the TFS correlates positively with empathic concern and perspective taking on Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index ($r = .35$ to $.42$), trait emotional intelligence, and satisfaction with life. In marital research, spouses who score higher on the TFS exhibit greater dyadic adjustment, lower hostile attribution bias during conflict, and superior conflict resolution styles.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity analyses demonstrate that the TFS measures a construct distinct from self-forgiveness and general social desirability. The correlation between the TFS and scales assessing forgiveness of self (such as the Mauger Forgiveness of Self Scale) is typically modest ($r \approx .15$ to $.28$), confirming that the propensity to forgive other people represents an independent psychological construct. Additionally, correlations with Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale scores remain low to moderate ($r = .18$ to $.26$), indicating that scale responses are not merely reflections of impression management or socially conforming self-presentation.

Criterion and Predictive Validity

The TFS reliably predicts affective and physiological indices of distress. In laboratory stress paradigms, individuals with higher TFS scores display attenuated cardiovascular reactivity (lower mean arterial pressure and faster heart rate variability recovery) when recalling past betrayals. Furthermore, in clinical studies examining substance misuse (e.g., Scherer, 2010), lower scores on the TFS significantly predicted higher levels of alcohol misuse, chronic anger, and depressive symptom severity.

Reliability

The Trait Forgivingness Scale exhibits robust reliability across diverse populations, settings, and linguistic adaptations.

Internal Consistency

Across multiple cohorts, the internal consistency of the TFS meets standard psychometric criteria for brief self-report instruments:

• In the original scale development studies by Berry et al. (2005), Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients across five distinct collegiate and adult samples ranged between .74 and .80.
• Subsequent validation studies evaluating clinical cohorts, veterans, and international populations have confirmed internal consistency estimates typically clustered between .76 and .82.
• McDonald’s omega ($\omega$), a more robust estimate of composite reliability when item-factor loadings vary, has demonstrated comparable parameters ($\omega \approx .77 – .81$).

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

Because the TFS is designed to capture an enduring disposition rather than a fluctuating emotional state, high test-retest reliability is essential:

• Berry et al. (2005) reported a test-retest reliability coefficient of $r = .76$ over a 3-week interval, demonstrating significant temporal stability.
• Extended longitudinal evaluations over 8- to 12-week intervals have yielded stability coefficients between $r = .68$ and $.74$, indicating that the measured construct remains stable in the absence of targeted clinical interventions.

Factor Analysis

Extensive exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support the structural validity of the TFS as a predominantly unidimensional instrument.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale development, Berry et al. (2005) conducted principal components and principal axis factoring with promax and varimax rotations on an initial pool of candidate items. Scree plot inspections and eigenvalues-greater-than-one criteria consistently revealed a dominant primary factor accounting for approximately 35% to 42% of the common item variance. While initial exploratory models sometimes reveal a slight separation based on item directionality (positively worded items vs. negatively worded items), this is an artifact of reverse scoring rather than substantively meaningful subdimensions.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Structural evaluations employing Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) demonstrate that a single-factor model provides an adequate to excellent fit to observed data when method effects associated with reverse-worded items are accounted for:

• Single-Factor Model Fit: In baseline models, standard fit indices reflect adequate fit: $\chi^2/df < 3.0$, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) $ge .93$, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) $ge .91$, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) $le .065$.
• Bifactor / Correlated Errors Model: When allowing residual covariances among reverse-scored items (Items 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8) to account for method variance, model fit improves substantially: $\text{CFI} ge .97$, $\text{TLI} ge .96$, and $\text{RMSEA} le .048$ ($90% \text{ CI } [.032, .061]$).
• Standardized Factor Loadings: Standardized factor loadings across items range from $.42$ to $.74$, with the strongest loadings observed on Item 10 (“I am a forgiving person”, $\lambda \approx .74$) and Item 2 (“I can forgive a friend for almost anything”, $\lambda \approx .68$).

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS)
• Primary Reference: Berry, Worthington, O’Connor, Parrott, & Wade (2005)
• Construct Measured: Dispositional (trait) interpersonal forgivingness
• Instrument Type: Self-report psychometric questionnaire
• Number of Items: 10 items
• Subscales / Dimensions: Unidimensional (single composite score)
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Mildly Disagree, 3 = Agree and Disagree Equally, 4 = Mildly Agree, 5 = Strongly Agree)
• Scoring Methodology:
  • Reverse Scored Items: Items 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8 must be reversed prior to aggregation (i.e., $1 \rightarrow 5$, $2 \rightarrow 4$, $3 \rightarrow 3$, $4 \rightarrow 2$, $5 \rightarrow 1$; mathematically calculated as $6 – X$).
  • Directly Scored Items: Items 2, 4, 5, 9, and 10 are scored as endorsed.
  • Total Score Calculation: Sum all 10 recoded items. Total scores range from 10 to 50. Alternatively, researchers may compute an average mean score ranging from 1.0 to 5.0.
  • Interpretation: Higher scores denote a stronger dispositional tendency to forgive interpersonal offenses, whereas lower scores indicate chronic grievance holding, resentment, and vengeful inclinations.
• Administration Duration: Approximately 2 to 4 minutes
• Target Populations: Adults and adolescents (approx. age 14 and older) across research, organizational, community, and outpatient clinical settings

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Trait Forgivingness Scale was developed and published in 2005 by Jack W. Berry, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Lynn E. O’Connor, Les Parrott III, and Nathaniel G. Wade. The instrument is considered an open-access, non-commercial psychological assessment tool designed for scholarly research, educational purposes, and non-profit clinical evaluation.

No formal licensing fees or commercial purchase orders are required for non-commercial academic research. The scale was made openly accessible in scholarly works, including published empirical articles in the Journal of Personality and academic repositories (e.g., Virginia Commonwealth University Scholars Compass). Clinicians and researchers wishing to use the scale are expected to reference the original publication (Berry et al., 2005) in all derived presentations, reports, and manuscripts. Any commercial deployment, inclusion in proprietary software platforms, or profitable clinical distribution requires direct written permission from the copyright holders and primary authors.

References

• Berry, J. W., Worthington, E. L., Jr., O’Connor, L. E., Parrott, L., III, & Wade, N. G. (2005). Forgivingness, vengeful rumination, and affective traits. Journal of Personality, 73(1), 183–225. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2004.00308.x
• Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113
• McCullough, M. E., Root, L. M., & Cohen, A. D. (2006). Writing about the benefits of an interpersonal transgression facilitates forgiveness: An anger-reduction mediation model. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(5), 887–897. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.74.5.887
• Scherer, M. (2010). Forgiveness and the Bottle: Promoting Self-Forgiveness with Alcohol Misuse (Doctoral dissertation, Virginia Commonwealth University). VCU Theses and Dissertations, Paper 2109. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/2109
• Thompson, L. Y., Snyder, C. R., Hoffman, L., Michael, S. T., Rasmussen, H. N., Billings, L. S., Heinze, L., Neufeld, J. E., Shorey, H. S., Roberts, J. C., & Roberts, D. E. (2005). Dispositional forgiveness of self, others, and situations. Journal of Personality, 73(2), 313–359. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00311.x
• Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2006). Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Theory and Application. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203955673

Items of the Scale