The Injustice Gap

An important aspect of the stress-and-coping model of forgiveness is the injustice gap, which is the degree to which victims perceive the aftermath of an offense as not meeting expectations of ideal justice. The magnitude of the injustice gap has been hypothesized to be proportional to the difficulty of forgiving an offense. In Study 1, we created the Injustice Gap Scale (IGS). We examined its psychometric properties and initial evidence supporting construct validity. In Study 2, informed by the stress-and-coping theory of forgiveness, we examined 2 foundational hypotheses regarding coping processes that may increase forgiveness by lowering the perceived injustice gap. As predicted, the size of the injustice gap mediated the relationship between perceived humility and forgiveness (avoidance and benevolence, but not revenge), as well as between relinquishing justice to the Sacred and forgiveness (avoidance and benevolence, but not revenge).