The Emotional Impact of Forgiveness on Autobiographical Memories of Past Wrongdoings

Fernández-Miranda, Gabriela
Stanley, Matthew
Murray, Samuel
Faul, Leonard
De Brigard, Felipe

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
Department of Philosophy, Providence College
Department of Philosophy, Duke University

Jessica D. Payne served as action editor.

This work has been presented at several conferences, including the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. It has also been presented in several seminars and colloquia at different universities, including Duke University, Universidad Javeriana, Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, University of Grenoble, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Boston College, University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, Pennsylvania State University, and Harvard University. This research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (Grant 61923) awarded to Felipe De Brigard.

Gabriela Fernández-Miranda played a lead role in formal analysis and visualization and an equal role in data curation, investigation, methodology, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Matthew Stanley played an equal role in conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Samuel Murray played an equal role in conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Leonard Faul played an equal role in conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing. Felipe De Brigard played a lead role in funding acquisition, investigation, project administration, resources, software, and supervision and an equal role in conceptualization, formal analysis, methodology, writing–original draft, and writing–review and editing.

Felipe De Brigard, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, 201E West Duke Building, Durham, NC 27517, United States [email protected]

Received January 13, 2024

revised March 23, 2025

Accepted April 8, 2025

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 154(8):p 2179-2200, August 2025. | DOI: 10.1037/xge0001787

Victims of wrongdoing sometimes forgive to repair relationships with the wrongdoer. But how does forgiveness do this? Some have argued that forgiveness changes the way the wrongdoing is remembered. We empirically adjudicate two competing accounts of how forgiveness is related to memory. The episodic fading account states that forgiveness alters both the episodic and the affective characteristics of autobiographical memories of being wronged. By contrast, the emotional fading account states that forgiveness mainly alters the affective characteristics of autobiographical memories of being wronged. While the episodic fading account predicts that forgiveness is associated with less vivid and detailed memories of being wronged, the emotional fading account predicts that forgiveness need not be associated with diminished episodic characteristics. Across four studies (N = 1,479, after exclusions), we found consistent support for the emotional fading account but not for the episodic fading account. In a pilot study and in Study 1, we found that forgiven wrongs were rated as less affectively intense and less negatively valenced compared to unforgiven wrongs, while there was no difference in the episodic characteristics of the memories. We replicated this finding in Study 2 and additionally found that the valence and intensity of forgiven wrongs are different for the victims of wrongdoings compared to perpetrators. Finally, in Study 3, we found once again different ratings of intensity and valence for forgiven relative to not forgiven wrongs and, additionally, we found that the affective characteristics of remembered forgiven wrongs were associated with diminished tendencies toward seeking revenge and avoiding the wrongdoer along with amplified benevolence toward the wrongdoer. In sum, memories of forgiven wrongs consistently differed in their affective, but not their episodic, characteristics relative to memories of wrongdoings that were not forgiven.