The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)
Volume 3, Issue 1, No.10, DIP: C03175V3I12015
http://www.ijip.in | October – December, 2015
© 2015 I S Mudgal, Tiwari G; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Self-Forgiveness and Life Satisfaction in People Living
with HIV/AIDS
Mudgal, S.
1
*, Tiwari, G. K.
2
ABSTRACT
The basic goals of the present study were to explore the nature and patterns of relationship
between self-forgiveness and life satisfaction of the participants diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and
normal healthy persons with no reported chronic physical and/or mental health problems. A total
of eighty participants comprising forty diagnosed HIV/AIDS adult patients aged 30 to 42 years
(M = 35.50, SD = 4.77) and forty normal individuals aged 19 to 40 years (M =26.81, SD = 4.79)
took part in the study whose self-forgiveness and life satisfaction were measured through
standardized psychometric tools. The results of the present study demonstrated that the
participants inflicted with HIV/AIDS had lower mean self-forgiveness score as compared to their
normal counterparts. The same trend was found to be recurring again for the life satisfaction
scores of HIV/AIDS and normal participants. The results of the study have been discussed in the
light of current theoretical background of forgiveness, life satisfaction and chronic disease. The
findings of the study have important implications for policy makers, health professionals,
caregivers, students, researchers and administrators.
Keywords: Self-forgiveness, Forgiveness, Life satisfaction, HIV/AID, Chronic illness.
Forgiveness has become a popular topic of increasing interest to the researchers in the recent
past. The researchers have laid emphasis on the multidimensional nature of forgiveness and the
importance of both interpersonal as well as self-forgiveness (Enright & The Human
Development Study Group, 1996), the self-forgiveness has still attracted comparatively little
empirical attention. Most research programmes have tended to discuss the nature of self-
forgiveness only within the context of interpersonal forgiveness theory (Tangney, Boone, &
Dearing, 2005), making efforts to draw parallels between forgiveness of self and forgiveness of
others. The researches have demonstrated that self-forgiveness is only weakly correlated, and in
some studies unrelated to forgiveness of others (Mauger, Perry, Freeman, Grove, McBride, &
McKinney, 1992; Thompson, Snyder, Hoffman, Michael, Rasmussen, Billings, Heinze, Neufeld,
1
Research Scholar, Department of Psychology, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Doctor Harisingh Gour
Vishwavidyalaya, Sagar
2
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Doctor Harisingh Gour
Vishwavidyalaya, Sagar
*Responding Author