Why Forgive and Forget is Bad Advice

Forgiveness is a widely accepted virtue across religious and cultural traditions, yet it poses a paradoxical question. Letting go of past hurts can feel dangerously vulnerable, potentially exposing us to similar offenses from the same perpetrator or others like them. However, releasing these grudges can also bring peace by alleviating feelings of resentment, anger, or hate.

These lingering memories can haunt individuals for a lifetime, often contributing to repeated violence or endless cycles of war, which are among humanity's most devastating problems.

Duke University researcher and cognitive scientist Felipe de Brigard has been examining the connection between memory and forgiveness since the early 2000s, with support from the John Templeton Foundation. He has recently received a MacArthur Foundation grant to continue his work. De Brigard has focused his research on the interactions between forgiveness and memory, specifically in a mountainous region near the northern coast of Colombia called Montes de María.

For decades, thousands of murders occurred in this area, primarily carried out by right-wing paramilitary forces.

In our conversation, de Brigard shared his insights on how forgiveness impacts the emotional weight of painful memories, the science behind memory formation, and why some offenses are harder to forgive. When people are told to "forgive and forget," his research suggests it's actually bad advice. He explains that "forgetting" is a vague concept that can mean different things to different people.

The memory and forgiveness project he leads stems from a previous decade-long study that takes advantage of the fact that recalling a personal event can alter the memory itself.

Most research on this subject concentrates on the negative effects, observing how misinformation or biases can distort the content of the original memory when recalled. De Brigard wanted to explore potential positive outcomes of the memory-forgiveness relationship. He found that one such positive consequence is called "emotional reappraisal."

When people experience particularly negative memories, they can engage in a mental process called downward counterfactual thinking. Instead of imagining how the event could have been better, they consider how it could have been worse. This comparison often leads to a sense of relief, knowing that the outcome was not as dire as it could have been. By incorporating this relief into the original memory, future recall becomes less painful.

De Brigard believes forgiveness operates similarly. When we forgive, we don't forget the event; rather, we modify the emotional response associated with it. By reappraising the memory, we can bring ourselves to forgive without erasing the event from our minds. While minor offenses may be easier to forgive, more severe cases—such as violence against a community or genocide—might prove more challenging.