Perceived Forgiveness Experiences of Young Adult University Students: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

It is seen that most studies conducted in the context of forgiveness discuss forgiving others, meaning the forgiveness of the transgressor by the victim. However, considering the relational aspect of forgiveness, the experiences of the individual who is the transgressor in this process are also worth examining. With this consideration, in this study, it was aimed to discover the experiences of university students at the ages of 18 to 30 who had made transgressions in their interpersonal relationships and been forgiven by those who were the victims of these transgressions. Information on these experiences was collected using a qualitative research design and the phenomenology method. The sample of the study included 15 university students. The experiences of the participants regarding perceived forgiveness were manually examined by the researchers using the thematic analysis method, and codes, categories, and themes were formed based on the statements of the participants. As a result of the analyses, four themes in total explaining the forgiveness experiences of the participants, namely ‘contact process, ‘relational responsibility/decision-making’, ‘transformative effect of being forgiven’, and ‘value of being forgiven’, were obtained.

Keywords

• forgiveness
• being forgiven
• feeling forgiven
• perceived forgiveness
• thematic analysis

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