Mediating role of self-reflection and insight in the relationship between forgiveness and Gestalt contact disturbances

Abstract

During the university period, individuals join a social environment in which they learn to establish new relationships. The emergence of these new experiences can bring about interpersonal conflicts and the process of forgiveness. Disturbances in the individual's interactions with oneself and others during this process may have negative effects on forgiveness. Some theories and models mention the important roles of self-reflection and insight into the forgiveness process. However, the relationships between Gestalt contact disturbances, forgiveness, self-reflection, and insight were not examined sufficiently. The aim of the current study is to examine the mediating roles of self-reflection and insight in the relationship between Gestalt contact disturbances (contact, full contact, dependent contact, post-contact) and forgiveness (self forgiveness and forgiveness of others) in a sample of university students. The participants were a total of 377 university students, 246 (65.3%) women and 131 (34.7%) men, who were reached by convenient and snowball sampling methods. The current study included university students aged 18-30, with an average participant age of 23.93. In the data collection process Gestalt Contact Disturbances Scale, Self-Reflection and Insight Scale and Forgiveness Scale were applied. Descriptive statistics, correlation and mediation analyses were conducted using SPSS 23.0 and PROCESS Macro 4.2 (Model-4). The findings indicated that insight had a mediating role in the relationship between contact and full contact with self-forgiveness. Self-reflection had a mediating role in the relationship between dependent contact and post-contact with self-forgiveness, while insight had a mediating role in the relationship between contact and forgiveness of others.