Orathinkal Article Critique

Orathinkal Article Critique

Hannah Bartow

Liberty University

Orathinkal Article Critique

Orathinkal, Vansteenwegen, and Burggraeve (2008), present their study in their article entitled, “Forgiveness: A perception and motivation study among married adults.” The article contains the standard layout for scholarly journal articles: title, abstract, introduction, method, results, and discussion (Jackson, 2009). The focus of this article was to evaluate understandings of forgiveness among participants, and then to examine whether there was a link between perception of forgiveness and actual forgiveness. Forgiveness is a topic that is gaining greater interest in the psychological and metal health fields, especially, in this case, as a major contributing factor to marital longevity (Orathinkal, Vansteenwegen, & Burggraeve 2008). Thus, there is sufficient evidence that forgiveness is therapeutically effective and beneficial.

Orathinkal, et. al. (2008) employed a snowball sampling technique to recruit 787 participants to engage in two questionaries’ including: Enright Forgiveness Inventory and The Forgiveness Motivation and Perception Checklist. Out of the 787 participants 424 were first-married, meaning they had remained in their first marriage; and 363 were remarried, meaning that they were divorced or separated and remarried or they were living with a partner (Orathinkal, et. al., 2008).

After all participants had filled out their questionnaires, it was found for the first part of the study, that about 40% were able to distinguish between forgiveness and reconciliation and the other 60% saw these two concepts as identical. The second part of this study warranted a highly significant difference in the positive perception of forgiveness between first-married and the remarried couples. On a gender level, however no difference was found at all (Orathinkal, et. al., 2008).

Critique of Title and Introduction

Title

Pyrczak (2008)...