ABSTRACT

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 everexperienced. One way to be healed up should be to forgive thepersons who gave the hurts to the older people. Forgiving processis very much related to cognitive change, and factors of thecognitive changes in the forgiving process in old age are ➀children’s ascent in their SES level, ➁ interaction with the others,➂ deterioration in health, ➃ observation of death owing to anatural disaster, ➄ retrospection and healing of life through areligion, and ➅ indirect intervention such as educational programs.This study was to explore if there would be any differences in thecognitive change factors according to the time or age when olderpeople had forgiven the persons. Participants were 80 men and 85women who were aged from 60 to 83 years, and they were allwho had ever experienced the serious emotional hurts in the pastas well as had ever forgiven the persons who gave them thehurts. None of them have ever had any professional help on theirhurts. They were asked when they had forgiven the past hurts,and asked to assess how much each cognitive change factoraffected 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 forgivenesswere tabulated according to gender as well as the time when olderpeople had forgiven the hurts. The major findings were that therewere differences in cognitive change factors according to the timewhen older people had forgiven. For instance, interaction with theothers was the most influential factor when the time of olderpeople’s having forgiven was in their 30s or 40s, whereaschildren’s ascent in their SES level was in their 60s.