Forgiveness in college students: The role of childhood trauma and humor

The main goal of the study is to explore the predictive power of childhood trauma and humor on college students' tendency to forgive. College students aged 18-25 living in Turkey (N= 423) were included in this study. For the data collection, the demographic information form was prepared by the researcher, the 18-item Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS) adapted to Turkish by Bugay and Demir (2010a), Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-33) adapted to Turkish by Şar et al. (2012) and revised by Şar et al. (2020), and Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS) adapted to Turkish by Aslan et al. (1999) and revised by Özdoğru (2018) were used. The results of the data of the descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment Correlation, Hierarchical Regression Analysis, Independent Groups t-test, and Mann Whitney-U Test are presented in the tables. According to the results of the study, the predictive role of childhood trauma and humor on college students' tendency to forgive is found (p< .05). The independent variables explain %12 of the total variance with regard to the total forgiveness score of college students. Significant differences are found between the self-forgiveness and gender (p< .05); no significant difference is found between the total score of forgiveness (p> .05). The limitations and findings of the study are stated in the related literature. Along with these, suggestions for future studies are presented. Keywords: Forgiveness, Childhood Trauma, Humor