Fundamentalism and forgiveness

Two studies investigated the associations between religious fundamentalism (RF) and aspects of dispositional forgiveness: pro-forgiveness attitudes and the tendency to forgive others. In Study 1, a direct self-report measure of RF was significantly associated with pro-forgiveness attitudes, but not with the tendency to forgive. In Study 2, we conceptually replicated these results by combining a measure of religiosity and a measure of need for structure, a cognitive style variable related to rigid, categorical thinking. A significant interaction between religiosity and need for structure revealed that the positive association between religiosity and pro-forgiveness attitudes was higher among respondents who were also high in need for structure. As expected, this pattern did not occur with the tendency to forgive, which was positively related to religiosity but negatively related to need for structure.