Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0001-3306-7020

Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Reader 1

Lahnna Catalino

Reader 2

Sara Masland

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Isabella S Lindsay Castelli

Abstract

Despite clinicians’ attestation to self-forgiveness’ relevance in clinical practice, as well as research suggesting its positive relationship to well-being, most clinicians are not familiar with models for facilitating self-forgiveness. The present study draws on theoretical overlap between mindfulness theory and three prominent models of the self-forgiveness process, as well as empirical research showing a positive association between dispositional mindfulness and dispositional self-forgiveness. Participants were adults in the United States, randomly assigned to a mindfulness exercise or control (progressive muscle relaxation exercise). Participants were asked to think of a transgression they committed, report their self-forgiveness for that transgression, and retake the measure after the audio exercises and a prompt in which they were asked to think about the transgression in relation to the audio. Results replicated past research, demonstrating a positive association between dispositional mindfulness and dispositional self-forgiveness. Dispositional mindfulness also positively predicted variance in baseline state self-forgiveness. Due to failure of the manipulation, causal effects were not investigated. State mindfulness was not predictive of self-forgiveness at Time 2 (controlling for Time 1 scores). However, on the subscale level, state mindfulness did positively predict variance in self-esteem restoration. Despite limitations, results show promise for further investigating mindfulness' potential as a facilitator for self-forgiveness in the population.

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