Character strength · Temperance
Forgiveness as a character strength: meaning and examples
The short answer: forgiveness, also called mercy, is the habit of letting go of resentment when someone has wronged you, and giving people a second chance. It does not mean forgetting, excusing, or staying in harm's way. It is one of the 24 character strengths of the VIA classification, in the Temperance family: the strengths that protect against excess.
What forgiveness looks like
People with a lot of forgiveness tend to:
- move on from small slights quickly
- do not keep a mental list of other people's mistakes
- give people a chance to make amends
- see the person behind the mistake
- forgive themselves, too, after learning from what went wrong
In everyday life
At work, forgiveness is the colleague who does not hold last quarter's mistake against you forever. In families and friendships, it is what lets relationships survive the inevitable hurts, from forgotten birthdays to sharp words.
Forgiveness is for the forgiver as much as the forgiven: holding on to anger is tiring. But it is a choice, never a duty, and it can coexist with clear boundaries.
Forgiveness and the strengths close to it
- Humility makes forgiveness easier: we all make mistakes.
- Kindness offers good things to others. Forgiveness stops bad things from defining them.
- Love relies on forgiveness to last.
When forgiveness is overdone, or underused
Like every strength, forgiveness works best in the right amount. Overdone, forgiveness can mean letting the same harm happen again and again, or forgiving before the other person has changed anything. Underused, grudges pile up, relationships end over small things, and old anger takes up space.
The aim is letting go of resentment while keeping yourself safe.
Is forgiveness one of your top strengths?
Ask yourself:
- Do you find it fairly easy to let go of being hurt?
- Do people say you give second chances?
- Can you think of someone you forgave, and feel lighter for it?
If you answered yes to most of these, forgiveness may be one of your signature strengths. The only way to know how it compares with your other 23 is to rank them.
Find your top strengths with the free test
Where this comes from
The 24 character strengths were described by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004). Happy Me's assessment uses public-domain questions from the International Personality Item Pool and is not affiliated with the VIA Institute.