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Culture, Forgiveness, and Health

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Forgiveness and Health

Abstract

The overwhelming amount of forgiveness research has been conducted within the US, with cultural assumptions embedded but rarely examined. The same applies to our understanding of the intersection of forgiveness and health issues. Without an understanding of the role of culture on forgiveness we run the risk of falling into a myopic perspective that assumes consistency across other cultures. A way to examine forgiveness from a cultural perspective is to scan the international literature. This chapter will review the international literature devoted to forgiveness in four areas, namely lay conceptualizations of forgiveness, forgivingness, interpersonal forgiveness, and intergroup forgiveness. These types of forgiveness will be set against a backdrop of national values in order to assist the reader with national contexts, and their relationships to health issues will be highlighted when possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Mark M. Leach

  2. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Stephanie Parazak

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  1. Mark M. Leach
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Correspondence to Mark M. Leach .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, USA

    Loren Toussaint

  2. Dept of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA

    Everett Worthington

  3. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    David R. Williams

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Leach, M.M., Parazak, S. (2015). Culture, Forgiveness, and Health. In: Toussaint, L., Worthington, E., Williams, D. (eds) Forgiveness and Health. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9993-5_15

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