Religious Intellectual Humility,Empathy,and Forgiveness Among Christians: A Longitudinal Investigation

Abstract

In the past decade, the role of humility and empathy in promoting forgiveness of interpersonal hurts has been increasingly highlighted in the literature. The present study aimed to replicate and extend the study conducted by Kim et al. investigating the humility-empathy-forgiveness link by using a longitudinal design. One hundred and thirty-nine participants were recruited from a large Christian university and completed a series of measures of religious hurt, religious intellectual humility (RIH), empathy, and forgiveness over the course of 6 weeks. However, only participants who completed all three waves of surveys were included in the analysis (n = 81). The results of this study supported the findings of Kim et al., in that RIH and empathy both predicted forgiveness at a later time, and empathy mediated the relationship between RIH and forgiveness. However, when baseline forgiveness was controlled for, empathy and humility no longer significantly predicted forgiveness at a later time. The results of this study suggest that the predictive power of baseline forgiveness may overshadow the effects of empathy and humility over time. Limitations, practical applications, and directions for future research on the humility-empathy-forgiveness link are also discussed.