Abstract:

Objective  To check the impact of the forgiveness intervention on the experience of anger and anger control of college students. Method  sAccording to the forgiveness level of 225 subjects checked by the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-18, we extracted 26 subjects from them whose forgiveness levels were one standard deviation lower than the mean. Then they were randomly allocated into two groups as the experimental group and the control group and recalled their anger experiences.  HR and the state anger were used to reflect the level of the anger experience. The anger control invention was used to check the anger control ability of the subjects. The benefit-finding and empathy technique was used as the forgiveness intervention to see its impact on the expression of anger and anger control of the subjects. Results  The HR of the individuals in both the experimental group and the control group were higher when they recall their anger experience than that when recalling their relax condition, and the HR of the experimental group were lower than that of the control group when they caught the forgiveness intervention(P=0.026), as well as the state anger(P=0.048). There was no difference in the anger control ability between the experimental group and the control group(P=0.075). Conclusion  The benefit-finding and empathy technique is well as a forgive intervention which could reduce the expression of anger. Some more studies are needed to check its impact on the anger control ability of the college students.

Key words: Forgiveness; Benefit-finding; Empathy; Anger; Anger control