Effects of Forgiveness on Self Actualization

Abstract

The present research aims to determine the relationship between self - actualization and forms of forgiveness - which may be via apology, agreement on, submission to, and approving of, or forgetting of what has happened. 313 voluntary university students (164 females, 149 males), chosen by means of simple random sampling, participated in the research. The Personal Orientation Inventory (Kuzgun, 1973) and the Turkish adaptation of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale (Thompson et al., 2005; Bugay & Demir, 2010; Bugay, Demir & Delevi,2012) were used as the data collection instruments. It was found in this research that forgiveness and self - actualizations predicted one another and there was a definite relationship between forgiveness and self - actualization. Increasing dispositional forgiveness in directing clients to self - actualization is suggested as a technique in psychological counseling, in accordance with the findings obtained in this research.