Forgiveness or Vengeance

"Forgiveness, rumination, and depression in the United States and Korea: A Cross-Cultural Mediation Study" whose objective was to find how forgiveness, rumination and depression are interrelated among cultural groups. The U.S. is known to be an individualistic culture (a culture in which independence/ self-reliance and looser social ties are encouraged) in comparison to South Korea which is known for being a collectivistic culture (a culture in which strong social ties are encouraged such as among family and members of one’s community). This article added sustenance to my change project as it provides valuable information on how different cultural groups would view the practice of forgiveness, based on multiple factors such as intrapersonal motives which are more common in individualistic cultures vs interpersonal motives which are more common among collectivistic cultures (Toussaint, 2022). Moreover, this article contains high credibility as its authors are authorities in the field of psychology and one author had actually received their degree from a university in South Korea, while the rest got theirs from the U.S., this fact helps to increase the reliability of the cross-cultural study. Another strength would be the measures employed were cross-culturally validated and showed good psychometric properties (Toussaint, 2022) this point would then further increase the reliability of the results produced by the study. On the other hand, there are quite a handful of limitations shown throughout the study; the sample size used in both studies were of comprised solely of college students in both countries which means that the results cannot be generalized to the total population of either country, this lowers the reliability of the study.Another weakness would be that these data are cross-sectional, and causality and directionality cannot be assumed (Toussaint, 2022), this creates an uncertainty that it is the type of culture that both countries have that directly leads to the figures produced in the study. Additionally, measures of offense-specific, state-like experiences of forgiveness and rumination exist and may be useful in future research on this topic and finally, biological pathways that may underlie associations between forgiveness and depression have been discussed, but the present data do not speak to these potential biological mediators (Toussaint, 2022). While these two points show the need for further research on the topic, it is acknowledgment helps to convey a sense of self awareness among the authors of the study, which increases the reliability of the article. Overall, this article is highly credible and moderately reliable.