Abstract:
The mediating roles of stress, social support, and health risk behaviours in the
relationships between dispositional forgiveness and mental and physical health were
examined. Participants were 748 undergraduate students (554 women, 194 men) entering
their first year of studies at Brock University. Participants, ranging in age from 17 to 25
years, completed the Brock University First Year Health Study and were provided
monetary compensation. Dispositional forgiveness, stress, social support, health risk
behaviours, mental health, and physical health were measured using self-report methods.
The data were analyzed separately for women and men because there were significant
mean differences on many of the study'S variables. Analyses revealed that the mediated
relationships between dispositional forgiveness and health were generally stronger for
women than men. Stress was the most robust mediator of the forgiveness-health relation
for both women and men. The only health risk behaviour that mediated the forgivenesshealth
relation was physical fitness and this result was found for women only. Social
support mediated several of the relationships between forgiveness and health but not
others. Results were discussed with reference to the literature on forgiveness and health.
Several directions for future research were offered, such as conducting longitudinal
research designs to assess the direction of causality better, investigating moderator
variables of the forgiveness-health relation, and building models, which incorporate
multiple mediators using structural equation modelling techniques.
