November 28, 2010

In Turning the Other Cheek, a Growing Scholarly Discipline

Brendan Smialowski for The Chronicle

Ryan Fehr, at the U. of Maryland at College Park, used subjects' drawings of aliens to test the effects of forgiveness on creativity.

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By Tom Bartlett

In 1995, on New Year's Eve, Everett L. Worthington Jr.'s mother was viciously assaulted and murdered in her home during a botched robbery. The details of the crime are sickening enough to make you question the humanity of the two perpetrators. No adjective is too strong—heinous, brutal, evil.

At the time, Mr. Worthington, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, was one of a handful of scholars studying forgiveness. His initial reaction to the crime,