In order to lead a healthy and happy life for their remaining years,
older people want to be healed up the past hurts they had ever
experienced. One way to be healed up should be to forgive the
persons who gave the hurts to the older people. Forgiving process
is very much related to cognitive change, and factors of the
cognitive changes in the forgiving process in old age are ➀
children’s ascent in their SES level, ➁ interaction with the others,
➂ deterioration in health, ➃ observation of death owing to a
natural disaster, ➄ retrospection and healing of life through a
religion, and ➅ indirect intervention such as educational programs.
This study was to explore if there would be any differences in the
cognitive change factors according to the time or age when older
people had forgiven the persons. Participants were 80 men and 85
women who were aged from 60 to 83 years, and they were all
who had ever experienced the serious emotional hurts in the past
as well as had ever forgiven the persons who gave them the
hurts. None of them have ever had any professional help on their
hurts. They were asked when they had forgiven the past hurts,
and asked to assess how much each cognitive change factor
affected for their forgiveness acts on a 5-point scale, 0 (not at all)
to 4 (very much). Data were collected thru a one-to-one interview.
Data concerning the influence of each factor over the forgiveness
were tabulated according to gender as well as the time when older
people had forgiven the hurts. The major findings were that there
were differences in cognitive change factors according to the time
when older people had forgiven. For instance, interaction with the
others was the most influential factor when the time of older
people’s having forgiven was in their 30s or 40s, whereas
children’s ascent in their SES level was in their 60s.