Virginia Research Day 2022

Medical Student Research Cl inical

03 The Effect Of Forgiveness And Service Love Intervention On Psychological Well-Being For Com Students

Ashley Mason, BS 1 ; Chansoon Lee, PhD 1 ; Adam Nakamoto, BS 1 ; Jiahe Wang Xu, MS 2 ; Robert Enright, PhD 2 ; Linda Mintle, PhD 1 Corresponding author: Ammason4@liberty.edu

1 Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine 2 University of Wisconsin-Madison

Introduction: The psychological well-being of college students is of national concern given an increase in student reports of stress that negatively impacts their mental health. Previous research in the area of forgiveness has shown forgiveness to be an important factor in the promotion of positive mental health. However, more study is needed to know whether forgiveness education could not only improve the mental health of college students, but also interpersonal and community relationships. Objectives: A 12-week online learning program utilizing a forgiveness and agape love intervention for college students was developed to investigate how the learning program impacts college students’ well-being. The learning program was developed and adapted from decades of research conducted by Dr. Robert Enright, a pioneer in forgiveness research. The study also examines how students’ spirituality and religiosity may affect the relationship between moral virtues and psychological well-being.

Methods: 151 participants from business, law, and medicine at Liberty University were recruited for the study. Data from pre and post- surveys were used to assess outcomes of the learning intervention. Students were randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group after being matched by college major, gender, service love score, and forgiveness score from the pre-survey data. Reliability analysis was performed for all scales used in the study. Descriptive statistics of demographic variables and scales were also used to identify participants’ profiles. A repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) will be used to assess the effects of group (experimental and control) and gender on the scales of agape love, forgiveness, hope, self- esteem, empathy, anger, anxiety, depression, intrinsic spirituality, organizational religiosity, non-organizational religiosity, and intrinsic religiosity. Preliminary Results: Since post-survey data is currently being collected, the following results were obtained from the pre-survey data.

54 males and 97 females, ages ranging from 18 to 36, participated in pre-survey data. Data indicated high reliabilities for all scales ranging from 0.79 and 0.98. There were no significant differences between the groups on all measures indicating an ideal base condition for the intervention program. A MANOVA test revealed that hope, anxiety, intrinsic spirituality, organizational religiosity, non-organizational religiosity, and intrinsic religiosity demonstrated statistically significant differences between gender; males had higher scores than females in all areas but anxiety. However, there were no significant differences between schools on a linear combination of the scales. Post-survey data will be included in our poster. Conclusions: Preliminary data were evenly distributed between experimental and control groups. The scales chosen for the study were proven reliable. Pre-survey data showed that gender differences on the scales of hope, anxiety, and religiosity were assessed. Anxiety was higher in female students. Hope and religiosity were higher in male students.

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