Who Forgives? A Global Look at Letting Go

We all get hurt by people. But how often do we actually forgive them? Researchers asked over 200,000 people in 22 countries how often they forgive those who have hurt them.

Forgiveness is not just a personal choice; it is deeply connected to the culture and society we inhabit.

The answers varied widely. In Nigeria, 92% of people said they 'often' or 'always' forgive others. In Türkiye, only 41% said the same. This study is the first to use nationally representative data to map forgivingness across the globe.

When researchers looked at what personal traits went along with higher forgivingness, two patterns stood out. First, people who attended religious services more than once a week tended to report the highest levels of forgivingness. Second, older adults — especially those 80 and up — tended to forgive more often than younger adults. But these patterns were not universal. In some countries, the differences between age groups or religious attendance groups were small or even reversed.

The study also found that when averaged across all countries, forgivingness was similar between men and women, between people with different education levels, and between immigrants and non-immigrants. However, within individual countries, there were sometimes notable differences along these lines. For example, in Japan and Poland, women tended to report higher forgivingness than men, even though this difference was not visible when all countries were combined. These findings suggest that forgiveness is deeply personal but also shaped by culture, age, and religious life in ways that differ from place to place.