At long last, the truth is out! A brief and very interesting but – let’s face it – pretty inconsequential report from Medical News Today, concerning a study from The University of the Basque Country, ht JD:

According to the study, parents forgive more than children, while women are better at forgiving than men… “A decisive factor in the capacity to forgive is empathy, and women have a greater empathetic capacity than males”, Carmen Maganto, co-author of the study and a tenured professor at the Psychology Faculty of the UPV, tells SINC.

What drives forgiveness? Children believe that “one forgives with time”, while parents point to reasons such as “remorsefulness and forgiving the other person” and “legal justice”.

The authors of this study say that parents who have forgiven most over the course of their lives have an increased capacity to forgive “in all areas”. Parents and children use similar definitions of forgiveness. Not bearing a grudge, reconciliation and understanding-empathy are the terms most used by both groups to define forgiveness.

However, there are greater differences between men and women. Both see “not bearing a grudge” as the best definition of forgiveness, but men place greater importance on this characteristic.

Hmmm….

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