Sociodemographic variation in dispositional forgivingness: a cross-national analysis with 22 countries

We used nationally representative data from the first wave of the Global Flourishing Study (N = 202,898) to (1) explore the distribution of forgivingness in 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries and (2) identify potential differences in dispositional forgivingness across nine sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, marital status, employment status, years of education, immigration status, frequency of religious service attendance, religious affiliation, racial/ethnic identity). Our descriptive analysis supported substantial cross-national variation in the proportion of people who endorsed ‘often/always’ forgiving others, ranging from.41 (Türkiye) to.92 (Nigeria). We estimated country-level descriptive statistics for forgivingness in each sociodemographic category, and then performed a series of random effects meta-analyses to aggregate results across countries. Meta-analytic results provided evidence of subgroup differences in forgivingness for religious service attendance and (to a lesser extent) age, with the highest forgivingness observed among people who attended religious services more than once a week and those 80 years or older. However, sociodemographic differences in forgivingness varied considerably across countries, including for those sociodemographic variables that did not show clear evidence of subgroup differences when country-specific estimates were pooled. Our findings lay the foundation for population-level assessment of forgiveness over time and public health strategies to promote forgiveness.