BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:
Forgiveness
has been found to be a useful intervention for past trauma across a variety of
situations. However, this has yet to be experimentally tested in victims of
bullying. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the impact of imagining
forgiveness, avoidance, or revenge responses towards a perpetrator among young
adult victims of bullying.
METHODS:
One
hundred and thirty-five undergraduate psychology students aged 17-24 who
reported a recent experience of being victimized were led through imagery
rescripting where they recalled a personal episode of bullying and imagined a
new ending to one where they forgave, avoided, or took revenge on the bully.
RESULTS:
Results
indicated significant differences between Time 1 (imagining the event as it
occurred), to Time 2 (imagining an alternate ending) for all three processes.
Negative affect decreased significantly in the forgiveness and avoidance
conditions, but not in the revenge condition. Positive evaluations of coping
decreased significantly in the revenge condition, but not in the avoidance or
forgiveness conditions. However, imagined forgiveness of the bully was more
stressful than either imagined avoidance or revenge.
LIMITATIONS:
The
short-term measurements and the researcher-directed re-scripting limit the
interpretation of results, however, yield valuable information about the
immediate impact of imaginal exposure and point to future research directions.
CONCLUSIONS:
The
impact of focusing on immediate stress reduction in dealing with bullying is
explored, and a combination of short-term avoidance and longer term forgiveness
is highlighted as a potentially effective strategy to deal with the negative
emotional consequences of victimization.
- 1 Department of Psychology , Macquarie University , Sydney , Australia.
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