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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, Tavia Gilbert. And along with journalist Richard Sergei, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing.
Today, we bring you the second in our two-episode series focusing on forgiveness and on the groundbreaking research project studying the effectiveness of Dr. Everett Worthington's Reach Forgiveness workbook. We've learned that forgiveness has an impact not only on the lives of individuals, but on whole communities.
As Dr. Worthington put it in part one of our series, forgiveness actually furthers the likelihood of world peace. Last week, we heard the deeply personal accounts from Dr. Worthington, Dr. Lyudmila Shtanko, and Dr. Sergei Timchenko about the role of forgiveness in their lives. Today, we'll do a deeper exploration about the Global Forgiveness Study with four of the doctor's study project colleagues,
and learn more about the individual and societal impacts of forgiveness. We begin the conversation with Dr. Tyler Vanderweel, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. VanderWiel is also the director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and served as the REACH Forgiveness Study Research Director, taking responsibility for the details of the study's research design and its statistical analysis. Here's Dr. VanderWiel with a quick reminder about how REACH breaks down the steps to achieving forgiveness. Please.
intervention that we were testing in this study was based on Dr. Worthington's REACH model, where each letter of REACH stands for a different part of the process. I recall the hurt, he empathized with the
Offender A, the altruistic offer, gift of forgiveness. C, commit to forgive and then H, hold on to the forgiveness during times where those difficult emotions return. And there have been many studies of reach forgiveness showing that in a number of different contexts and settings that is effective at bringing about forgiveness.
forgiveness, but most of those approaches have required numerous sessions with a trained therapist or counselor. What we were trying to do with this intervention and with this study is to examine whether trying to distill those principles into a simple self-directed workbook that one could go through in a few hours
would likewise have similar effects. The advantage of a workbook is that it can be widely and freely disseminated, and so its potential to promote forgiveness at communal, national, even international scales is truly profound. In order to get the best possible information about REACH's effectiveness, the study was conducted as a randomized trial.
What does that mean? A randomized trial really is the gold standard for establishing causation in the biomedical and social sciences by randomizing patients to either receive an intervention or not, or in this case, to receive an intervention immediately or after some delay. It's the sort of design that's used to examine the efficacy of cancer treatments, various pharmacology.
ecological medications, vaccines, and so on. And so we used this gold standard study design to look at the effects of this forgiveness intervention. We really wanted to look at the potential cross-cultural applicability. We had about 4,400 participants total across these various sites. So this is generally considered a very large number.
randomized trial, and some of the motivation for that was really trying to more definitively establish the evidence. But some of the motivation was, again, we wanted to look at whether this was going to be efficacious across different cultures, and if that was so, are the effects larger in some places than others? There had been prior randomized trials of forgiveness interventions, so what made this one stand out?
Other studies had looked at mental health outcomes for therapists driven forgiveness interventions, but this was the first to look at mental health outcomes for a workbook intervention and then the first to cover so many cultures. So it had a number of important strengths in terms of advancing the science of forgiveness and trying to more definitively establish effects on forgiveness and on mental health. There's no guarantee that
that an intervention will work similarly in a new setting. But one of the advantages of looking at multiple countries is having a greater confidence that the effectiveness isn't dependent, as best we can tell, on the setting. What seems to be the case
From this study, what seems relatively clear is that if we were to widely disseminate these forgiveness workbooks, then on average, forgiveness would improve as would symptoms of anxiety and depression and self-reports of well-being.
The principal investigator of the study, Dr. Man-Yi Ho, Honorary Research Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was also intrigued about what could be discovered in a forgiveness study across multiple countries and cultures. She shares why each site location was chosen.
We have five different sites: Hong Kong, Colombia, Indonesia, South Africa, and also two different sites in Ukraine. In all these cultures or societies, we have been going through different kinds of continuous conflict.
with different maybe religious groups, different political groups, etc. I think that it's important for us to understand how people actually respond to conflict, no matter if it's individual, interpersonal, or societal levels. Dr. VanderWiel adds...
The enrollment criteria for participation in the study was simply that someone was struggling with some sort of interpersonal offense. It didn't necessarily have to arise from the conflict present in these various countries. At each site, the participants in the study were randomized to either receive the forgiveness workbook immediately or to receive it after some delay. This is sometimes called interdiction.
wait list randomized trial because everyone does get the intervention eventually. Everyone does receive the workbook eventually, but we're able to look at whether receiving it immediately helps with these outcomes two weeks later before the second group receives it.
Dr. Ho shares why Hong Kong was chosen as a site for the study and what participants from that Chinese region reported from their experience. Hong Kong, after the social movement, I think there is a great need for forgiveness. It's a process. It's a journey. So I think we're starting to rebuild trust
and relationships with different groups. Because that definitely affects our interpersonal relationships, even though it's like a societal context of the conflict was happening in Hong Kong exactly three years ago when we started our study. The effect of the conflict
is much more overwhelming than we have imagined. One of the exercises is empathy. So how we emphasize the transcribers for what they have done. So we have more understanding and trying to take their perspective and
I got feedback from some participants. After they have completed the study, they came to me and said, "Thank you." They said that we need this type of intervention, helping them to save their relationships and also rebuild trust in their relationships. So I believe not only speak from the data, but also from real individuals telling me that the workbook has the powers helping them to change.
their relationships and also their lives. I believe that is a great need for people who have been hurt by the others really needs the workbook or forgiveness to help them to bounce back to maintain their life with better well-being and also better relationships. Whenever people use the REACH workbook, study results confirm that they're primed to find a path to greater peace
on a large scale or small. Forgiveness actually is a viable alternative, apart from using violence or other different destructive measures. I think the workbook or the forgiveness interventions provide people a new window
to look into the issues and the ways that how they can deal with it differently. I guess it's that we are kind of like planting the seeds that telling people or showing people that forgiveness actually is one of viable ways they can use or consider in forgiving other people. Especially, I heard from some families, they might
not even can sit down to have dinner together due to that period of time during the conflict. So the forgiveness actually gives us other real points that we are still family no matter what. We can discuss, we can talk about it, we still can hold different wills. It's fine that the relationships we can find still find something good in the other person.
Attorney Andrea Ortega Bechara was the site director for the study in Colombia at Universidad del Sino, applying her education and expertise in philosophy, organizational and social psychology, and positive applied psychology to her leadership in the forgiveness study.
I'm particularly interested in the possibilities of forgiveness to facilitate peace in my country, which has been struggling for over half a century.
to move past the internal armed conflict. Colombia, I think, was chosen for multiple reasons, not only because it's a country that's been struggling for peace for over half a century, but because it's a country that has also showed that it's been working on forgiveness out of research, science,
level, high level, this might be the most cost effective, ambitious and impactful forgiveness project that has ever taken place. We implemented it with two different populations. One was with war survivors, which is the vulnerable population that I think needs it most because they have high degree of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to our studies.
But I also wanted to implement it with college students to make sure that we have different populations that could benefit. What really got to me was to see how approachable it was by different populations from different backgrounds. So, for example, war survivors whose education level is very low, they haven't attended high school, over 99 percent of them.
they were able to relate to all of the exercises in the same way as professors at a university that also took the intervention. So it's a method that's been designed and thought for all backgrounds and people were able to relate to it very easily.
And everyone in the study that we interviewed manifested that it had an impact. So that's what actually surprised me the most, to see how much it applies to everyone. The South African Research Site was directed by Dr. Sean Joint, affiliated with South African Theological Seminary and a research associate with the University of the Free State.
He says the forgiveness study was uniquely suited for his country. Forgiveness is important for South Africa because of our history. It's a known factor around the world that the term apartheid or apartheid in Afrikaans has its roots here. And so there was a lot of animosity between different people groups. So maybe if we track it back a little bit, we could say there was animosity between the early settlers here.
and the indigenous people. Then there was animosity between the Boers, the Afrikaners and the English.
Then there was animosity between the Boers and the local African folk. So it's interesting to see how there's always been conflict and disruption and disharmony between the different people groups. And that's why forgiveness is very important, because how will we as 11 people groups with 11 official languages coexist peacefully if we do not extend forgiveness to one another? There were some folk who really felt liberated,
by the fact of someone has heard me, I have a tool that I can use and I don't have to live with this bitterness within me anymore. I think for others, it was huge to find a tool that could set them free.
Because the challenge with unforgiveness is it imprisons you. It doesn't imprison the person that's hurt you. That's on the individual level. Now we also have to ask ourselves the question, particularly in the South African context, multicultural, multiracial. So what if that hurt is someone else from another culture, from another race? So it works on two levels that I am working as an individual on forgiving or receiving forgiveness, but
But then also, if it's another people group, it helps South Africa move forward as a nation in trying to reduce the racial tensions and conflict we've had.
Dr. VanderWiel recognizes the possibility of a positive feedback loop of individual forgiveness and societal forgiveness. I do think interpersonal forgiveness can help prompt more communal forms of forgiveness that works in the reverse direction as well as the society moves towards communal forms of forgiveness that might indeed also help facilitate interpersonal forgiveness as well.
Dr. Joint agrees in the relationship between individual forgiveness of loved ones and communities forgiving societal wounds. Forgiveness is very important in the world we're living in. We live in a world where we have to get along with one another.
We also know that forgiveness has different healing properties. For example, we know it has mental health attributes. We know it has physical health attributes. We know it has sociological in the sense of social cohesion. So there are many positives for forgiveness. We talk about the individual level, freedom to the individual, not being in disharmony with him or herself, in peaceful coexistence with yourself. In other words,
you are able to live at peace, forgiving yourself. What happens is if we don't forgive, the cycle of retribution and vengeance continues.
All that happens is we become a planet filled with people with one eye and one hand because we're continually having to take out the eye of the other person or chop off their hand for the injustice they've done to us. And we don't want to be a world of people with one eye and one hand. We want to be a world that we can see with both eyes, hear with our ears, use our hands together to build a good society.
Dr. Worthington described last week the difference between decisional and emotional forgiveness. And Bachara underscores the importance of both kinds of forgiveness to break the cycles of violence in her country as well. Forgiveness from science can be defined as a process that has cognitive steps and also emotional. So at the cognitive level, it's more about a decision to forgive,
that is going to have more of a societal impact, which means that you make a decision that you're not going to retaliate, you're not going to take vengeance about your actions, how you're going to act in the future towards the person that offended you. And in that sense, that's the most important part of the puzzle for a country like Colombia and all the countries that are going through internal armed conflict, this self-regulation aspect of forgiveness is
That is what brings societal flourishing because it's what's going to set the foundation for sustainable peace. If you're able to self-regulate when something hurts you and you're not going to use violence to resolve conflict. And then the other process of forgiveness is gaining emotional peace. It's internal. It's not about a decision about how you're going to act in the future, but it's a process of letting go of all the emotional baggage that
that clutters your life, basically. So you carry on resentment, you carry on bitterness, hatred, rage, and all these negative feelings are impacting not only your mental health, but there's also research now showing that it impacts your physical health as well. So forgiveness is this double process about how you're going to act in the future that is going to set the foundations for sustainable peace.
Dr. Joint understands how difficult a process forgiveness can be.
He's experienced his own challenges with forgiving harms and hurts. Forgiveness is a lot of hard work. It's hard work when you think of it for myself, self-forgiveness. It takes effort to arrest those thoughts. It's hard work when it's interpersonal forgiveness to say forgive you or someone else who may have hurt me. Often people, when someone has hurt me, and I use the term, you know, you're playing the tape, the recording.
So I've seen it in my own life. There's some situation that I feel unhappy about. I felt out of control. I felt maybe someone's hurt me. And without realizing it, I will find myself role-playing in my mind a situation and how I would have responded to them. And then when that happens, I have to ask myself the question, why am I doing this? What is happening here? And so there's this loss of control, the sense of disharmony, not being at peace, and
And when we choose to forgive, what happens is we're letting go of that thing and we're saying, I'm stopping the recording. I'm stopping the negative rumination thoughts that keep on coming back. I'm choosing to no longer feel what I am feeling. And that takes time. It takes time. I choose to try and see the situation from the other person's perspective without giving a justification that what they did was right or wrong, but more a sense of,
If I was in their shoes, how would I appreciate or experience the situation? Because it doesn't necessarily come naturally to stop the recording, see the situation from another person's perspective, and fully release negative feelings, we need resources like the REACH workbook, says Dr. VanderWiel.
Many people struggle with forgiveness. It's often not easy to bring about and one often has the experience of thinking one has forgiven but then having feelings of anger subsequently return. But because it's hard to bring about, we need tools and approaches to help people to forgive who want to forgive and are struggling to do so.
As we learned in our previous forgiveness episodes, forgiveness doesn't necessitate reconciliation, nor does it remove justice from the equation. Here's Dr. Ho. Some people ask us, so if we forgive, does that mean we have to reconcile with the other person?
Forgiveness does not include reconciliation because people have some barriers when they think about forgiveness. They think they have to reconcile with the other person quickly, but actually it's not because even forgiveness, it takes time. It's a process. So if people can need to reconcile or reconciliation later on, that would be great.
But that is not a condition. So we want to tell people that you can learn to forgive. You don't have to worry about whether you need to reconcile with them right after forgiveness. But that would be great if you feel you're ready or the other person is also ready to reconcile. So we don't want people to have this burden that they have to reconcile, so they have to forgive. And we say that's actually a different concept. And Dr. VanderWiel?
I would say forgiveness is replacing ill will towards the offender with goodwill. Forgiveness is quite distinct from reconciling or excusing the action or not demanding justice. One can pursue a just outcome and still forgive, still hope for the ultimate good of the offender. One can forgive, one can hope for the ultimate good of the offender without necessarily having a restored relationship. And I think those distinctions are
are really important when thinking about forgiveness as a public health issue. If we're telling people and trying to encourage people to forgive, we have to make clear that this doesn't mean foregoing justice. We can pursue justice and forgiveness at the same time. Forgiveness is in fact an important public health issue. So I do think being clear about what one means by forgiveness is quite important.
Whether reconciliation follows forgiveness or not, forgiveness liberates the forgiver, says Dr. Ho.
It's a matter of choice, whether we choose to be angry in the rest of our life or we choose to forgive. So the consequence of forgiveness is set us free. Yeah, so we are free from our inner prison because if we don't forgive, we can't lock ourselves in the prisons with darkness. But if we can open up,
We try to learn to forgive the other person. We can see life. We don't have all this baggage. We learn to forgive. If we forgive, I think first of all, we do not hold a grudge. Forgiveness is closely related to mental health. People will get better relationships, not only with the transgressors, but also in general, other people. So relationship definitely is an important predictor.
of people's mental health, psychological health. When people are holding grudges, bitterness, anger, they're more prone to have psychological symptoms like depression and anxiety. In our study, we also find that the level of anxiety and depression will be reduced based on they have taken the intervention of forgiveness.
Forgiveness has been found to be related to physical health, psychological health, also spiritual health. So it's pretty crucial for people's overall well-being. So I think no matter scientifically or in practice, it's important for people's mental health. Of course, it also relates to people's relationships, especially in intimate relationships. We see
A lot of studies also show that it actually relates to a better relationship with other people. So if we have a better relationship, we will feel happier. And also, in general speaking, we will have better mental health as well.
Dr. VanderWiel affirms that the study results proved not only reaches effectiveness, but the benefits that result. What we can say definitively from the randomized trial is that access to the workbook improved forgiveness and reduced depressive and anxiety symptoms, as well as improved well-being two weeks later.
Bachara adds that the study showed the greatest benefit, a state of overall wellness that goes beyond even the diminished negative symptoms of ill health.
The exact outcomes that we have right now is that they reduced anxiety, reduced depression, promoted forgiveness, that is to say that levels of forgiveness increased, and most importantly, different variables regarding flourishing were also increased, like the flourishing of the people also improved. Dr. Joint and Dr. Vanderweel also refer to the flourishing that forgiveness can inspire.
Forgiveness helps people flourish, and flourishing people forgive. What gives me hope as far as forgiveness research is concerned is if the research can lead to a better understanding, the better understanding can lead to better practice.
and better practice can lead to better societies living in harmony and flourishing. What I think this randomized trial showed is that forgiveness can be an effective pathway to promote flourishing. As human persons, we are created for and called to love others. And I think forgiveness is an important aspect
of that love, we inevitably all make mistakes and unfortunately do harm to one another. And I think we need a path back towards good relationships, towards loving relationships. And I think forgiveness really is central to that. Forgiveness is part of what it means to flourish.
Dr. Ho and Bechara also link forgiveness to human flourishing. Even though each of the researchers, including Ukrainian Drs. Shtenko and Timchenko, as well as Dr. Worthington, have experienced profound trauma and heartache, and even though each of the research sites has a history of great societal conflict, the researchers recognize that those challenges present opportunities for growth and deeper wisdom.
No one would wish for the losses any of these leaders have experienced, but those losses show that when we experience traumatic suffering and harm, we can still choose how we respond. We can still choose to forgive in time, and meanwhile, to embody the ability of humans to do good for themselves and for others, even in the most desperate circumstances.
If we want to flourish, I think sometimes we have to go through some presence or a little bit difficult challenges in our life. And we are not living in an isolated island. We have to connect, relate to other people.
Sometimes this experience may not be always positive. Sometimes it can be negative or it can be hurtful. So how do we deal with that? I think it's a process of learning and growing. If we can find a better way to forgive, we can deal with the situation and we still maintain better psychological health.
that will have better capacity for growing and also drive and flourish. So that is my idea that forgiveness is important in terms of we always need to relate to each other for flourishing life. - We're also looking at hope and how hope is stimulated via forgiveness or if it's the other way around.
But in any case, what we notice always is that all these flourishing outcomes, and when I say flourishing outcomes, I mean variables such as social relationships that are good, that you are high on social relationships, or that you are high on
on virtues, such as hope, such as gratitude, such as forgiveness, wisdom, post-traumatic growth. So all these flourishing aspects. So there's these two definitions of happiness. One is hedonic, which is based on positive feelings and just feeling good about yourself and enjoying life. And it's a very sensible, sensual type of experience, which is
eating, having fun and having positive emotions. But then there's this other aspect of well-being which positive psychology really focuses on, which is eudaimonic well-being, which comes from Aristotle, which basically means that you're not only feeling good, but that you are doing good.
to the world and to the other people around you. And that you're working on yourself to develop character strengths that are gonna make you a person that contributes positively to the development of their community, their society and the world at large. And the way I like to think about flourishing is a person that is not only feeling good with themselves, but it's also being able to contribute to find out what is it that they have to give
to the world and they do it in the way they do best. If I were to be honest with you, the episodes that have made me grow the most as a person and flourish are
Maybe they haven't been all that positive. Maybe they have been negative. So you grow through trauma. You grow through the experience of all that you need to forgive. I'm really not into those definitions of flourishing or happiness where there's no problems and everything is going great. No, I think life is about challenges, failures, and how you're going to deal with all of that and acceptance.
Though the REACH workbook is a secular tool for forgiveness, Dr. Joint thinks about forgiveness through a spiritual lens. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.
on the person saying sorry and it's not dependent on me getting justice. Forgiveness is a gift I give towards another person and in giving it I myself receive a gift. My working definition is more from a theological and in a layman's point of view. Forgiveness does not mean that what you did is okay or alright but I'm gonna let go of my right to get even with you and I'm gonna leave it up to God to sort you out.
And if he happens to be nice to you, I'm going to accept that because he's been nice to me. Perhaps it is the Christian faith of South Africa's famous president that influences Dr. Joint's views on one's ability to forgive even grievous harm. Nelson Mandela, our previous president, our first president of the democratically established South Africa. If you think of 27 years in prison and you are released...
and you do not seek vengeance on your captors, your oppressors, and you choose to forgive them and invite them into a dialogue of rebuilding a nation that they had partially destroyed in the way they treated some of the inhabitants, that takes a lot of forgiveness. I think he had a lot of time to reflect and to consider the ramifications of forgiveness versus non-forgiveness. Mandela didn't just forgive, says Dr. Joint,
He offered his transgressors the opportunity to help create a new vision for the nation. He has room at the table for everyone.
Everyone has an opportunity to contribute to building of a new South Africa. We're not saying that what you've done in the past is irrelevant or not important. But what we're saying is we want to build something new and it'll take us all giving each other a bird of leeway of saying, OK, how do we move forward on this? So I think his forgiveness at that time, I remember it was 1994. And in fact, he was released in 1991. It was quite significant time period in my life as a young adult and emerging adult at that time.
And I realized and heard a lot of stories of how he prevented a civil war in South Africa. And I recall many churches having all night prayer vigils and weeks of prayer and fasting, asking God to intervene and save South Africa from a civil war. And I think he used Nelson Mandela in that way.
Mandela's example inspires Dr. Joint's own way of living. So when we talk about a virtue, these are things we aspire to. These are things we hold up as an ideal to live by. When we think of the fact that it's an ideal and I also want to hold myself accountable, I would want to practice forgiveness even as I've received forgiveness. And this is a personal journey. I try to in the evenings before going to bed, ask myself the question,
Is there something I need to repent of? Is there something I need to ask forgiveness of? And is there someone I need to forgive? And so process of forgiving myself if I had, the process of asking forgiveness of them if I had, very important. As I said, holding it as a virtue means I see it as an ideal, but I also hold myself accountable to that ideal. Dr. VanderWiel also thinks of forgiveness as a virtue.
And I think it is attaining a good. It is attaining disposition to want good for the offender. It is a restoration of love. So I consider forgiveness a virtue. And Mandela's restoration of love is an inspiration to Dr. VanderWiel as well.
I think Nelson Mandela is an extraordinary example of forgiveness and I think has had a profound effect on South Africa and on many other individuals and countries. I think the ongoing struggles in South Africa
show that forgiveness is not something that needs to just occur once and it's done, but it is an ongoing work of life. One needs to strive to not just forgive individual offenses, but also to be a forgiving person and to create a forgiving society. Forgiveness
I think, frees the victim from rumination, from suppression, from being trapped by the offense, can lead to greater well-being and flourishing, but it does not directly address matters of justice. Those also need to be taken seriously and handled through other means. We need to
remember that it is part of a larger societal undertaking to try to have flourishing communities and working towards justice is part of that as well. Bachara also names Mandela as one of her inspirations for forgiveness. Nelson Mandela has to be that person to me because he
It's just so extraordinary when you look at his biography, how he was able to, I mean, just put everything behind and work with all the people that had hurt him so much over and over for so many years. He's my forgiveness icon by far. Dr. Ho adds Dr. Worthington. She refers to him as Ev, who forgave his mother's murderer, to her list of inspiring exemplars of forgiveness.
Mandela is definitely one of the icons. I think Elf is also an icon. I was pretty touched actually at that time when I met him and learned about his story. Now that the study has concluded and the effectiveness of REACH has been substantiated, what are the researchers' takeaways? And what do they hope to see happen next? Machara says, I do think that
The most important lesson from this exercise is how cost-effective it can be to deliver a community public health intervention because with the Forgiveness Community Awareness Campaign, we were able to reach 3,000 people at once.
with a five-week campaign, and this is the first campaign in the world to actually prove that has a mental health impact on its participants. So if you can actually just through one intervention in five weeks
change the mental health of 3,000 people at once. Imagine what we could do as a country if the government really took seriously these sort of interventions. What we were able to tell is that basically public health interventions are effective to promote forgiveness, mental health understood as the diminishing of depression and anxiety, and promoting flourishing.
at a very cost-effective way, massively, in only five weeks' time. Dr. Joynt is eager to expand the scale and scope of the research into the REACH Forgiveness workbook and to explore how forgiveness can help achieve flourishing
not only for individuals, but for communities worldwide. This project can be taken around the globe. The initial findings show that it has been positively received and had good outcomes. And the aim of the grant was to see, can it be scaled?
Can it go from individual to community and from community most probably further maybe countrywide? And so this level here was communities in five different countries. I think forgiveness is a multifaceted diamond. So we're only seeing some refraction, some perspectives at present.
We obviously want to delve into forgiveness from the different disciplines. So forgiveness in law, I mean, that is quite a difficult situation. Justice and mercy and forgiveness in that context. Forgiveness in ethics, forgiveness as we are doing societal, sociology, psychology. There are a lot of things that we can still dig deeper. But one of the things we want to ask ourselves are what are the inhibitors?
that stops people from forgiving. And so it's like we'd say here in South Africa, you can't legislate forgiveness. You can't legislate anti-racism. We can have great laws, but unless people change from the inside out, those laws are ineffective in a sense of long lasting and societal change. I think one of the areas that we really could dig deeper into is self-forgiveness.
That's an area that's needing some more attention. So we're talking about, if we look at South Africa between the colonizers and the indigenous people, if we're looking at Rwanda between the Hutus and the Tutsis, if we're looking at Armenian genocide, we're looking at different cultural groups and nations that have to work at forgiving one another for past harm.
Dr. Ho agrees that a goal of the project is to promote it even more widely. So that will be our dream, if we can be promoted around the globe by using, adopting this effective intervention. Dr. VanderWiel is satisfied with what the research has accomplished so far, but he's looking forward to taking it further.
I think some of the big questions that future research really needs to tackle are the persistence of these effects. We know that having access to the workbooks earlier improved forgiveness and reduced depression and anxiety symptoms at two weeks. But how long do those effects persist and does one need kind of consistent
reuse of the workbook to address various offenses in order to sustain those effects. Those are some of the questions we don't know from this particular study.
Can we develop screening, adequate screening approaches, I think is another important and open question in this science of forgiveness research. I would say there's an emerging science of forgiveness that, you know, we certainly know a lot and a lot more than was known 30 years ago, both about sort of who
who's forgiving and who tends not to be. And I think this particular study, it was an important contribution to the science of forgiveness. We now have a much greater understanding of the effects of not just forgiveness promotion interventions in general, but even of the self-directed forgiveness workbook in particular.
The potential that these workbooks have with regard to widespread dissemination and potentially affecting societal forgiveness and public health considerations with respect to depression and anxiety are quite important. Bachara, I think, speaks for all the researchers when she names forgiveness as one of the keys to human progress and worldwide peace.
So there is a science of forgiveness and I think it's kind of like the missing link worldwide for governments to really focus on public policies
that can help us move forward. We've never been better off before in terms of any statistics that you can look at, in terms of hunger, in terms of education, in terms of commodities. We're doing better than ever before, but there's one area in life that we're not doing better than before. And that area is how do we live peacefully with ourselves and how do we live peacefully with others? One
One of the major human problems that we're lagging behind, despite all of our technological advances, is how do we not use violence to resolve conflicts? We haven't been able to tackle that. And forgiveness is...
In my humble opinion, the missing link in that equation, if you talk to anyone, most likely most people anywhere around the world, they're dealing with something that has to do with unforgiveness. We're all carrying some baggage. There is a science of forgiveness. There's much more to know, but there is enough for us to keep going and be hopeful about the future. This series of conversations humbles me.
And I wonder if they do you too. About a year ago, something happened in a community that was very precious to me that made me so angry, so sad, and so resentful. I've awakened sobbing several times since last summer, plagued with dreams about what I'm losing, how unjust the situation is, how thoughtless and careless the perpetrators are.
This situation has been a very big deal to me personally, but of course, it's nowhere near a genocide or the murder of my mother or the imprisonment of my country's beloved peace leader or a violent civil conflict or civil war. Writing these episodes makes me aware that I am in control of my decisions. I can hold on to this bitterness and my unwillingness to reconcile.
Like Dr. Timchenko said last week, there is power in that. I feel like that's a protective cloak, almost. But I can also choose to download the Reach workbook, spend two and a half hours this coming weekend working through it, release my suffering, free myself from being imprisoned by the looped recording, as Dr. Joint says, and let it go.
I can still choose not to reconcile with the people who have caused harm, and I probably will make that choice. But I can release myself from being influenced day in and day out by the pain that their actions caused. I don't have to wait for them to apologize. They won't. But the choice is in my hands. Am I wise enough and strong enough to forgive? I don't want to.
But I should. I know that it will be best for me and for the world if I do. Life is hard and forgiveness is hard, isn't it, my friends? This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with Richard Sergay and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by TalkBox Productions and Tavia Gilbert with senior producer Katie Flood. Music by Alexander Felipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod.
Executive Producer, Michelle Cobb. The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.