Working life is full to the brim with social interaction and with it comes a range of emotions that play a part in our wellbeing, from empathy, altruism and gratitude through to humour, compassion and humility.
Such emotions are the subject of little attention by people professionals, maybe because they are difficult concepts to pin down, and maybe because working life just does not seem to give enough freedom for people to talk about them and accept them as real and meaningful.
Yet there is a growing interest in these human qualities amongst psychologists as a rich source of understanding about people in their workplace. In a unique study that we came across the concepts of forgiveness and revenge are assessed as mediators of health, wellbeing and engagement at work.
Revenge
Human beings have a natural tendency towards revenge, it being a basic human motivation and therefore deeply engrained in our makeup. There is also something intensely appealing about it, it gives us a satisfied glow, even when we observe it being dished out by others, to others.
Such is the strength of the revenge tendency that nearly all cultures have tried to take it out of the hands of those who have suffered and placed it in the hands of a <<dispassionate third party (such as society itself)...the formation of stable political life has been virtually dependent on the regulation of the revenge response>> (1).
Forgiveness
Forgiveness can be understood in a number of different ways (1). It can be seen as a change in the emotional reactions and the behavioural reactions towards those who have injured them, a change towards a more positive or prosocial attitude.
It can also be seen as a personality characteristic where those high on the characteristic are more likely to forgive across a variety of circumstances and those low on the characteristic unlikely to forgive across any circumstances.
It can also be seen as part and parcel of certain social units with some social units high on forgiveness (families), and others low on forgiveness (law courts).
The Study (2)
The sample was a group of 94 pastors of a large church denomination each tasked with delivering empowering leadership to their communities. A range of variables were measured including forgiveness behaviours, revenge behaviours, and outcome variables including health, burnout and engagement. The table shows some of the relevant correlational results.
The Results
As the table shows, forgiveness does not correlate with health, it does not have a statistically significant relationship. Engaging in forgiveness behaviours will not statistically improve your health.
However, revenge behaviours are statistically related to health in a negative way. The more revenge behaviours the poorer the health of the pastors. Taking revenge, it seems, is bad for your health.
The biggest correlations were against the Engagement variable, particularly the one between revenge and engagement. So we can see that not only will revenge behaviours significantly adversely affect health, they can have a devastating effect on work engagement.
(1) McCullough, M., & Witvliet, C. (2005) The psychology of forgiveness. In C.R. Snyder and Shane Lopez. (Eds) Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press
(2) Laura M. Little, Bret L. Simmons and Debra L. Nelson. Health Among Leaders: Positive and Negative Affect, Engagement and Burnout, Forgiveness and Revenge. Journal of Management Studies 44:2 March 2007, pp243-260
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