• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.97-118
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• 2015

The aim of the present study was to examine moderating effects of self-esteem on perceived transgression wrongness and forgiveness defined as Worthington and Scherer's (2004) emotional forgiveness and decisional forgiveness when receiving apologies. Data collected from 861(486 males, 375 females) Korean college students were analyzed with hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The results were as follows. First, on emotional forgiveness, the two-way interaction effect of perceived transgression wrongness and explicit self-esteem was significant. And on decisional forgiveness, the two-way interaction effect of perceived transgression wrongness and explicit self-esteem was significant. The effect of perceived transgression wrongness on emotional and decisional forgiveness for individuals with high explicit self-esteem is stronger than its impact for individuals with low self-esteem. These findings show that explicit self-esteem may play an important role in forgiveness in college students through interactions with perceived transgression wrongness. Second, on emotional forgiveness, the three-way interaction effect of perceived transgression wrongness, explicit self-esteem, and implicit self-esteem was significant. The effect of perceived transgression wrongness on emotional forgiveness for individuals with high explicit self-esteem having high implicit self-esteem is stronger than its impact for individuals with low explicit self-esteem having high implicit self-esteem. These findings show that discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem are detrimental to emotional forgiveness. But, on decisional forgiveness, the three-way interaction effect of perceived transgression wrongness, explicit self-esteem, and implicit self-esteem was not significant. Implications and limitations of this study were discussed.