Forgiveness, Mindfulness, and Health

Forgiveness and mindfulness have both been associated with a variety of salutary health-related outcomes. Though thought to be related to one another, very little empirical work has examined the association of forgiveness and mindfulness, including in the context of health. Consistent with theory regarding the forgiveness-health association and the definition of health behavior, we hypothesized that mindfulness would play a role in the relationship between forgiveness and health. Cross-sectional mediation-based analyses were conducted on data collected from a sample of 368 undergraduate students in southern Appalachia. Participants were 73.64% female and 88.32% Caucasian, with an average age of 21.62 years. Mindfulness played a role in the association of forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others, and forgiveness of situations with physical health status, somatic symptoms, mental health status, and psychological distress. In the context of the forgiveness-health association, mindfulness may play a primary role for forgiveness of others and largely a secondary role for forgiveness of self and forgiveness of situations. The role of mindfulness may be explained by the (un)forgiveness-energy hypothesis, such that forgiveness may allow energy to be invested in mindful processes. Religious/spiritual diversity may impact the association of forgiveness and mindfulness. As this study may be the first to examine mindfulness as a health behavior and only the second empirical study to explicitly examine the association between forgiveness and mindfulness, more research is needed to understand the relationships among forgiveness, mindfulness, and health

Forgiveness, empathy and gender - a Malaysian perspective

Recent theorising has suggested that in non-Western collectivist contexts, the need for social harmony may play a greater role than empathy in motivating forgiveness, and that women may be more impacted than men by this cultural value. In this study, a sample of 233 Malaysian undergraduate students, 100 males and 133 females, recruited from four English-mediated universities completed the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) and the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory-12 (TRIM-12) to assess dimensions of empathy and forgiveness. Women exhibited greater empathic concern than men, but not greater perspective-taking. Men were less forgiving in terms of revenge-seeking behaviour, but men and women did not differ in avoidance of transgressors. The relationships between empathic concern and both facets of forgiveness were similar for men and women, as was the relationship between empathic concern and avoidance. However, the relationship between perspective-taking and avoidance was stronger among men than women. We found little support for the prediction that in this collectivist cultural context, perspective-taking would play a greater role than empathic concern in forgiveness. Further research is recommended to explore empathy and forgiveness in non-Western populations, with a need to take into account cultural factors. <br /

Ionospheric Response to Natural and Man Made Impacts

International audienceThe problem of energy transfer from the Earth’s solid mantles to the atmosphere and surrounding space is of essential importance for the fundamental geophysics and applied studies. These processes can largely govern the structure and dynamics of the phenomena developing in the near Earth space. Moreover, the consequences of such impacts as earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. upon the Earth’s electromagnetic field and ionosphere can become an extra factor in monitoring the processes involved in the upcoming large-scale seismic and meteorological catastrophes. The acoustic-gravity waves (comprising acoustic and gravity waves and hereafter referred to as AGW) are one of the most efficient ways to transport over the ionosphere the energy of the dynamic processes developing in the low atmosphere. The early experiments of the 1950’s and 60’s on Doppler sounding even showed that the ionosphere can serve as a sensitive indicator of natural and man made disturbances. The Doppler sounding of the ionosphere revealed impulse and wave disturbances excited by powerful sources of infrasound, such as: a) megaton nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, kiloton ground industrial explosions, b) earthquakes and volcano eruptions, c) thunderstorms, tornadoes and tsunamis, d) bolides and meteorites, e) rocket launches and flights of supersonicjets, f) aurora and solar eclipse