The Enright Forgiveness Inventory - EFI (Portuguese version) was used to verify relationships between forgiveness and degree of injury to the agents of hurt and also the degree of affect, behavior and judgment from victims towards their offenders. It was also checked whether culture, gender, age and religion affect the act of forgiving. Two hundred Brazilians and 394 Americans participated in the study. Findings were similar for both cultures. Forgiveness was negatively related to the degree of injury. People forgive family and friends at a higher degree than they forgive strangers or co-workers. Positive judgments received significantly higher scores than positive affect. No significant effect was found for forgiveness regarding gender, age or religion. Future studies should verify whether genuine forgiveness shows positive affect for offenders at a same degree as positive judgments or affect remains always lower than judgment for forgiving.
Interpersonal forgiveness; Degree of injury; Attitude moral
