Forgiveness Psychoeducation with Emerging Adults: REACH Forgiveness and Community Campaigns for Forgiveness
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript provides a comprehensive narrative review on the effectiveness of REACH Forgiveness interventions and community campaigns aimed at promoting forgiveness in emerging adults. It offers valuable insights into the psychology of emerging adulthood, the various forms of forgiveness, and the practical applications of forgiveness interventions in educational and community settings. The review highlights significant contributions to the field and suggests promising directions for future research. However, there are minor revisions suggested to enhance the clarity, depth, and impact of the manuscript.
The introduction provides a good overview of the topic but could benefit from a clearer articulation of the review's objectives. Specifically, outlining the main questions or themes explored in the review would help guide the reader through the subsequent sections.
While the narrative review approach is suitable for the manuscript's goals, adding a brief section on the methodology used for selecting and analyzing the studies included in the review could enhance the paper's rigor. This might include criteria for inclusion, databases searched, and any limitations encountered in the selection process.
The review discusses various forgiveness interventions, including the REACH Forgiveness model and community-based campaigns. A more detailed comparative analysis of these interventions, possibly in a tabular form, would provide a clearer understanding of their effectiveness, application contexts, and target populations.
Discussion of Limitations: The manuscript briefly mentions limitations in the Conclusions section. Expanding on the limitations of the current body of research on forgiveness psychoeducation, particularly regarding the generalizability of findings across different cultures and settings, would provide a more balanced view.
The review suggests future research areas, such as the need for studies in non-USA contexts and among non-college populations. Further elaboration on specific research questions, methodologies, and potential interventions that could address these gaps would be beneficial for guiding future work in the field.
Ensure that all references are up to date and include any recent studies that may have been published on the topic since the manuscript's submission. This will help maintain the review's relevance and comprehensiveness.
Author Response
See attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGenerally, this paper – summarizing REACH Forgiveness psychoeducation intervention research with emerging adults – is topically solid and the quality of writing is good. I have two main suggestions that, in my opinion, will strengthen the paper.
1. Although a literature review, the paper is very long and includes a considerable amount of detail. I believe the paper could be shortened quite a bit and still make the same basic points. For example, the discussion of emerging adulthood and its relevance to forgiveness is a good idea, but the argument could be made with a fairly brief discussion. Also, there are sections that could be removed or used as the basis for another paper. For example, the section describing the research conducted in Columbia.
2. There are many sections of the paper needing more comprehensive citing. Two examples include, Section 2 (the paragraph after the listing of the 9 tasks) and Section 3.1. However, as I read the document, I kept thinking about how more citing was needed.
Overall, the REACH Forgiveness approach is important and effective, as has been shown in this paper. However, I believe the paper could be shortened and still communicate the important findings.
Author Response
See attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for your responses to my initial feedback, including your work to make the presentation of the material more efficient. I understand and respect your reasoning for declining to address particular recommendations from my initial feedback.
Author Response
Dear Dr. Worthington,
Your manuscript has been reviewed by experts in the field and we request that you make minor revisions before it is processed further. Please revise your manuscript according to the reviewers' comments and upload the revised file within 5 days. Please click on the "Peer Review Reports" below to find the reviewers' comments and the version of your manuscript to be used for your revisions.
Peer Review Reports
Good job of responding to the reviewers' comments. However, you seemed to have missed the comments below. I would like to see these comments addressed by the author.
Response: Sorry. I don’t know how I missed these. I’ll attend right away.
Notes for Authors: This manuscript has potential to educate readers on the REACH Workbook and its use with young adults.
Response: Thank you.
However, it needs some work.
Response: I assume that somehow I missed the academic editor’s comments last time, so let me observe that I have already done substantial work on the manuscript providing more focus and better organization and expanded review of the available research that is the focal area of the review. But I have considered the following comments carefully to see whether they still apply to the current best copy. (Unfortunately, track changes will be difficult to use to identify my modifications beyond what was previously done, so I’ll try as much as possible to include verbatim, the substantive modifications in this response.
I agree with Reviewer 2 in that this manuscript needs some editing and focus. I would like to see more specific focus on a review of the REACH workbook with young adults. Some background information is appropriate, but more details regarding the use of the workbook with the young adult population is needed. The following suggestions are offered to improve the manuscript.
Response: In the previous revision, I did an enormous amount of editing and focus. So, most of that was already done. What is new about this comment is that “more details regarding the use of the workbook with the young adult population is needed.” I have sought to do that beyond the previous revision, which located more references using REACH forgiveness groups and workbooks with young adults. Because this specifically referred to the workbooks with young adults (and not the workbooks with adults Ho et al., 2024 and not the groups with young adults) I focused on that specific application in the present review. Here is what I added (in bold italics).
6.2. Self-administered REACH Forgiveness Workbooks
About 25 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been published on the group psychoeducational model (for a review and meta-analysis, see [23]). The model evolved to disseminating the model widely in response to a call from Kazdin and Rabbit [38] to develop non-traditional psychological treatments to meet insufficient treatments for mental illness in society. Harper et al. [39] created a self-administered do-it-yourself (DIY) workbook treatment that mirrored Worthington’s six-hour psychoeducational groups. The workbook took an average of seven hours to complete. Several trials showed it to be effective (see Table 1). Busy college students responded well to recruitment into intervention studies using REACH Forgiveness workbooks relative to the many studies using psychoeducational REACH Forgiveness groups. Much of this is because college students have busy and stressful lives. Fitting into a schedule that is acceptable to six to twelve adults who are attending a group together is difficult and often requires rearranging schedules to accommodate group times. Also, the DIY aspect allows college students to do such work at times when they prefer, and those times are often late at night when it is impossible to schedule groups. Young adults are computer savvy, and being able to access and work on the brief workbooks through computer is almost second nature in the modern generation.
Responding to Walton’s [40] call for developing very brief “wise treatments,” Ho et al. [41] shortened the DIY workbook. They selected practice-informed, highly effective activities. Pilot testing in an …
Line 43 describing focus of psychoeducation can include the word "forgiveness", so it reads "psychoeducation on forgiveness".
Response: This has been changed as suggested.
Starting on p.2 and the discussion of leading causes of death for adulthood, there needs to be more rationale for how unforgiveness causes substance abuse and other disorders. Research shows the dangers of substance abuse, but the author needs to describe the connection to unforgiveness in more detail.
Response: Here is added material addressing this concern.
Not only is substance misuse a direct contributor to deaths, but substance misuse is associated with impaired judgment, reduced inhibitions, and altered moods that can all contribute to reckless driving, violent conflict, relationship problems, unsafe sex, and unwanted pregnancies. Substance abusing young adults might encounter perceived injustices because they have conflicts with dating or intimate partners, parents, siblings, teachers, and friends whom they might feel are judging them. Unforgiveness can exacerbate problems with substance use and misuse in many ways. Unforgiveness is stressful, which adds to the allostatic load. Unforgiveness also leads to rumination, which makes most mental health problems seem more omnipresent. Unforgiveness also can itself be a stressor, and people who are already predisposed to cope with stress by substance abuse might intensify such coping efforts. Besides this extended look at substance misuse, which can yield multiple ways that unforgiveness is experienced in emerging adults, we can also see that homicide and suicide leave many emerging adults with forgiveness deficits. Emerging adulthood is a time when stimuli for unforgiveness are ubiquitous.
Line 128 should include the word, "have" instead of "has".
Response: Corrected (now line 146)
I don't think the section on "Religious and Philosophical Approaches to Forgiveness" starting on line 168 is needed.
Response: First, I shortened by 5 lines. But second, I do not agree that it should be dropped based on my experience with forgiveness across different types of communities. Religious people often resist scientific approaches to forgiveness because they feel science is trying to replace a valuable tradition. The same is true in dealing with philosophers. So, I find it better to explicitly cast science as complementary to, not antagonistic to, religion and philosophy. So, I choose to leave this section (a bit shortened) in. I have not disagreed with other suggested changes and there were many. But I believe this one needs not to be followed.
Delete the word, "the" in line 184.
Response: Corrected (line 195).
I don't think the statement on line 200, "Many emerging adults seek to learn about forgiveness from clinical psychology, reading or consuming through other media...." is true. This statement needs references and evidence. Many young adults don't know about the psychology behind forgiveness and most likely learned about forgiveness from their religion and its teachings.
Response: This is another statement I’d like to keep because I think it is true. However, I don’t think it is justifiable by scientific studies. But certainly I would think that it is just as difficult for the reviewer to support his claim by scientific references. Here’s why I think my statement is true. This generation is certainly an internet savvy and in fact, they tend to get most of their news (and most of their opinions, perhaps) from the internet. They listen to podcasts, YouTube talks including TEDx talks, and news feeds (which also show forgiveness to be frequently studied and reported). On the other hand, learning from religion is likely not nearly as popular as it was a generation ago given the growth of the religious “dones” as Van Tongeren et al. (2021) have reported. So, rather than take up more space trying to justify this within the article, I prefer just to let the opinion stand. If really needed, I would be glad to add the phrase to the following statement.
Many emerging adults, who are increasingly internet oriented in each succeeding generation, seek to learn about forgiveness from clinical psychology, reading or consuming through media pop psychology, or listening to other influencers who have themselves been influenced by research, clinicians, or other influencers.
However, I really don’t think that is a point worth calling attention to or providing some kind of indirect citation that does not really back up the claim about how they learn forgiveness.
- Again, more focus specifically on young adults is needed.
Response: It is hard (probably impossible without a redo of the article) to respond to this general statement, especially given that the article has likely been revised since this comment was posted.
Line 225 includes awkward wording and needs to be reworded.
Response: I’m hoping to figure out which line appears awkward. The “Many emerging adults…” was considered to be line 200. It’s 221 on my copy at this point. So, line 246 on my copy reads: “Psychoeducation is the dissemination of psychologically accurate information usefully and accessibly to anyone at affordable rates (or without cost). Psychoeducation can be delivered safely to the entire spectrum of people.”
I revised that sentence as follows:
Psychoeducation is the dissemination of psychologically accurate, useful, accessible, and affordable (or cost-free) information to the entire spectrum of people.
I hope that is the correct bothersome line.
- Section 6, discussing REACH Forgiveness as Psychoeducation for young adults needs to be more specific, thorough and detailed. Specific studies need to be described.
Response: I have attempted to comply without increasing the length of the article too much. I worked information about specific studies and why it works well for young adults in answering subsequent questions (see particularly question 10).
Paragraph starting on line 298 is confusing.
Response: I’m again trying to discern which paragraph this is. I previously oriented to referenced line 225 (my copy 246), and this is referenced as line 298, which would put my copy about 319 plus the material I added on REACH in response to query 9.
Hopefully, this is the paragraph that the reviewer believes to be in need of revision to alleviate confusion.
The REACH Forgiveness protocol did not emerge full-blown as REACH Forgiveness. Rather, several proto-REACH Forgiveness interventions were developed on the way to the entire model. McCullough and Worthington [34] initially sought to help people make a decision to forgive. As a one-hour group intervention, motivating people to make a decision to treat offenders more forgivingly had little impact. Emotional forgiveness was then targeted. McCullough et al. [35] tested an 8-hour empathy-forgiveness intervention aimed at promoting understanding and empathy for the offender, thus encouraging forgiving. That had larger impact.
Here's how I tried to clarify and worked in more information about specific studies.
- REACH Forgiveness as Psychoeducation
The REACH Forgiveness protocol as it was practiced as fully developed did not begin as REACH Forgiveness. Rather, several proto-REACH Forgiveness interventions were developed on the way to the final structure of the REACH Forgiveness model. McCullough and Worthington [34] initially sought to help people make a decision to forgive, so in that early experiment [34], two ways to encourage students to make a decision to forgive were compared using a one-hour group intervention. Motivating people to make a decision to treat offenders more forgivingly was attempted in two ways. One was appealing to the mental health and physical health benefits they would receive as forgiver. The other appealed to the benefit of restoring relationships. Neither had much impact, though appealing to mental and physical health benefits was superior to appealing to relationship benefits. Both aspects relate to decisional forgiveness and were subsequently incorporated into the full REACH Forgiveness model. But study of intervention to promote forgiveness afterward targeted emotional forgiveness first. The assumption was that, if people can be led to experience emotional forgiveness, they will more easily make a decision to forgive. McCullough et al. [35] tested an 8-hour empathy-forgiveness intervention aimed at promoting understanding and empathy for the offender, thus encouraging emotional forgiveness. That had larger impact than simply appealing to self-beneficial motives to make a decision to forgive. The empathy-forgiveness protocol was compared to an 8-hour self-benefit group treatment, and empathy promoted much more emotional forgiveness. In that experiment, the vital steps of recalling the hurt. promoting empathy, and stating one’s commitment to forgiveness were used as was some attention to maintenance, though it was unlike the H step in the current REACH model. But little attention was given to humble altruism as a motivator, doing exercises to promote explicit commitment to one’s forgiveness, current maintenance exercises, or generalizing forgiveness beyond forgiving the target transgression. Another set of studies [36] systematically dismantled the REA steps in the model with no intervention lasting more than two hours and some lasting only 10 minutes. Those five studies (see Table 1) were termed “proto-REACH” models because none tested the full model even though McCullough et al. [35] captured more of the essence of the model than the other brief proto-REACH studies, and could be considered as close to the current protocol as some other studies that attempted to modify the current REACH Forgiveness model.
Worthington developed the REACH Forgiveness groups because he was primarily interested in helping students struggling with unforgiveness. He was trained in psychoeducational group treatments at the University of Missouri-Colombia in the 1970s, and tailored those groups to the psychological experiences frequent among university students. In addition, he sought to develop a protocol that was robust to level of group experience of the facilitators so that intervention experiments could be conducted on untargeted transgressions, making the groups applicable to a wide population of users. Until 2010, only one published study from Worthington’s lab used a population other than college-aged students [37] although other research groups had applied it to other treatment populations (for example, see [38]). Whereas studies were being done on other populations from the early 2000s, publication of those did not explode until the mid-2010s [e.g., 39, 40].
Typical studies with college students compared a treatment with a group built on self-benefits to promote forgiveness (see [34, 35, 36, 41]. Wade’s lab conducted a series of studies comparing REACH Forgiveness groups with process-oriented group psychotherapy groups (see [40, 42-43]).
Reference is needed for statements on lines 310-312.
Response: I’m not at all sure, now what lines 310 and 312 refer to. (Okay, working backwards from “to meet insufficient treatments…” lines right now of 413-415, that would be 355-357, This is 45 lines prior . So that would be: “Within the A = Altruistic gift step, participants are invited to estimate what percent of the unforgiveness they had at the outset of the intervention that they have forgiven emotionally.”
I probably just could not accurately figure out what the reviewer wanted to be referenced. This sentence does not seem to call for a reference. Sorry.
Sentence on line 355-357 discussing how the REACH Workbook was developed "to meet insufficient treatments for mental illness in society" is concerning. Forgiveness does not treat mental illness, and I don't know of research to suggest it does.
Response: Well, true in a broad sense. But forgiveness interventions have reliably produced reductions in depression and anxiety and increases in hope, well-being, and flourishing. So, I revised this:
About 25 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been published on the group psychoeducational model (for a review and meta-analysis, see [23]). The model evolved to disseminating the model widely in response to a call from Kazdin and Rabbit [38] to develop non-traditional psychological treatments to meet insufficient treatments for mental illness in society.
to say the following, which is better written and attributes the plea for novel interventions to meet insufficient mental health needs to Kazdin and Rabbit (2013), but summarizes the volume of literature supporting how forgiveness interventions (in general) and REACH Forgiveness specifically can produce not only forgiveness but also reliable changes in mental health symptoms and well-being :
About 25 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been published on the group psychoeducational model (for a review and meta-analysis, see [23]), suggesting wide applicability. REACH Forgiveness interventions have not only produced changes in forgiveness but also reliably produced reductions in depression and anxiety and increases in hope, well-being, and flourishing (for meta-analyses of REACH Forgiveness, see [23] and for forgiveness interventions in general, see [27]). Thus, when Kazdin and Rabbit [46] issued a call for novel mental health interventions that could affect mental health and well-being, REACH Forgiveness groups were transformed into REACH Forgiveness DIY workbook interventions that could affect forgiveness and contribute to Kazdin and Rabbit’s call.
- Studies mentioned briefly in Section 6.3.3 need to explained and described in more detail.
Response: Section 6.3.3 summarizes a lot of studies. Covering each in detail would lengthen the manuscript unnecessarily. Details are summarized in Table 1, which provides some (but not exhaustive detail. I have referred readers to Table 1 for additional data on each individual study (changes in italics in passage below).
Five studies tested the proto-REACH model with emerging adults (see Table 1 for data for each individual study on N, type of participants, duration of treatment, d, d/hr). The mean N for the five studies was 93, and the d/hr was 0.104. In 1998, the entire model was complete [44], and studies on REACH Forgiveness psychoeducational groups began to be published in 2002. Nine studies investigated REACH Forgiveness psychoeducational groups with emerging adults (see Table 1 for characteristics of each study). The mean number of participants per study was N = 99. The mean d/hr = 0.104, as with proto-REACH studies.
[Note: N and d/hr were recomputed due to adding an additional study in this section.]
Four of those nine studies (see Table 1) were with Christian samples (mean N = 84 and mean d/hr = 0.078). Three of the four accommodated REACH Forgiveness for Christian beliefs, values, and practices [43-45]; one used the secular REACH Forgiveness group protocol with the Christian sample [46]. For Christian-accommodated REACH Forgiveness, mean N = 79 and mean d/hr = 0.077. For the study using the secular REACH Forgiveness protocol with a Christian sample, N = 99 and d/hr = 0.080.
I think information about effect sizes can be briefer.
Response: Sorry. I hate to do it, but I disagree once again. This is born out of studying forgiveness interventions since 1990, so I hope you can respect that. The reason I make such a big deal out of effect size per hour is that several meta-analyses have uncritically taken the effect size per se as the unit of analysis. This is highly misleading for the literature. In the careful meta-analysis of all existing interventions by Wade et al. (2014), published in JCCP, they found that there was a strong dose-response relationship. That is, interventions that took a long time tended to have large effect sizes and briefer ones tended to have smaller effect sizes. The small studies tended to be early demonstration projects involving say 10 to 20 participants and taking sometimes as long as a mean of 60 hours of treatment. Needless to say, that made such an intervention look extremely powerful. But Wade et al. (2014) covaried length of treatment and shorter (but not too short) and longer treatments had the same effect sizes per hour. Disregarding this finding, several meta-analyses since then have simply compared studies on total effect size. That might suggest that a treatment based on six or seven small demonstration studies (total N <100) was a better treatment that a six-hour treatment (replicated six times in different populations) based on an average of 100-200 participants per study (say a total N =1000 participants).
And we just completed a world-randomized-controlled-trial (Ho et al., 2024) of 4,598 participants across five nations on four continents. The effect size was 0.52 for a 3.34-hour treatment. The effect size per hour is strong and reliable (note, that 4,598 participants is more than the total number of participants in ALL forgiveness intervention studies from 1989 to 2021, but someone who is looking only at total effect size might steer people who need forgiveness treatment to something that was a long but not necessarily efficient treatment in d per hour.
Let me note that Enright’s and the REACH Forgiveness treatments (whose studies account for about the same number and are about 1/3 each of all treatments published) are EQUAL when d/hour is considered, so I’m not trying to privilege my treatment over his.
At any rate, I’d like to keep the d/hour emphasis in the document.
Conclusion is thoughtful.
Response: Thank you.
More implications for using the REACH Workbook with young adults and both college students and non college students could be added.
Response: Good idea. I added the following italicized text.
The brief 3.34-hour DIY workbook [49] shows promise in adult samples in five non-USA countries. But it has not been tested specifically with emerging adults in other countries or in the USA. However, it would seem to be especially attractive to busy college students where every hour seems jam-packed with activity; the 3.34-hour (on the average) duration makes it attractive as does the downloadability that allows students and other busy non-students to download it and work on it on their own schedule. Also, the workbook is free and self-interpretable, making it convenient for a computer-literate and web-oriented generation.
Manuscript needs a careful editing for grammar, awkward wording, and references.
Response: References are now redone to correspond to the revisions. (Just noting: This style of referencing, in contrast to APA style, entails much time.)
Overall, focus of manuscript could be more specific and focused on young adults.
Response: I’ve tried to do this through MUCH revision.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
