A Campaign for Forgiveness Research is a nonprofit organization that funds scientific research on forgiveness. Supported by the Foundation and other philanthropists, the Campaign has funded almost 50 projects related to the scientific study of forgiveness, covering aspects of forgiveness in individuals, interpersonal relationships, relations among nations and in nature. Investigators have measured the psychological, social and emotional traits of forgiveness and have correlated them with the biological, physical and chemical responses — even studying images of how the brain works while making decisions about forgiving. Now finishing its final year, the Campaign is publishing its findings.

Athough the informal study of forgiveness has been ongoing, the more rigorous, scientific study of forgiveness is a recent area of research. As Dr. Everett Worthington, Jr., a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and director of A Campaign for Forgiveness Research, notes, “There’s not a person alive that doesn’t have to deal with transgressions. The common wisdom of what forgiveness is and means,” says Worthington, “is more like a scattered mosaic of information.” However Worthington is optimistic that is improving: “Scientific rationality helps us make a picture of what was a very sketchy mosaic.” “As people have looked at it scientifically and have tried to define what forgiveness is more precisely, and then follow that up by actually measuring it,” says Worthington, “I think a lot of things are being revealed about forgiveness that weren’t in the common wisdom — or were there, but they were never put together.” Therefore by funding research in forgiveness, the Campaign is making these connections.

Nevertheless, what “forgiveness” actually is, says Worthington, is less clear-cut. “You could say it’s just changing your thinking, or it’s changing your motivation. Some people say it’s just making a decision about the way you’re going to act,” he says. “My claim is that it’s a change in your emotional experience.”

Understanding forgiveness as a change in emotional experience necessarily allows for researchers to study the physical and biological effects that correlate with this emotional change. The psychological connection to the physical is the basis for the scientific study of forgiveness that has exploded since the Foundation became involved.