A School of Education faculty member’s groundbreaking work in the field of forgiveness science is featured in the latest issue of UW–Madison’s award-winning alumni magazine, On Wisconsin.
On Wisconsin is printed quarterly and mailed to nearly 400,000 homes. In print since 1899, it remains one of the largest-circulation alumni magazines in the country.
The feature article outlines how Robert Enright, who holds the Aristotelian Professorship in Forgiveness Science in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology, launched the scientific study of forgiveness decades ago and has produced years of impactful scholarship on the subject since.
“When I started studying forgiveness in the social sciences, the idea was considered absurd,” Enright explains in the story. “Not anymore. Why? An idea mattered, and an idea grew.”
The article outlines the seed of the scientific study of forgiveness, some of Enright’s most groundbreaking research findings about the mental and physical health benefits of forgiving, how forgiveness can benefit some of our most vulnerable populations, the promise of forgiveness education for students, and Enright’s thoughts on how forgiveness could be a salve for the often-painful times we live in.
“What we are trying to see is: there is something to the person who hurt you,” he says in the article. “That’s not happening in today’s world.”
Last summer, Enright was lauded as a “game changer in modern psychology” by the American Psychological Foundation. The foundation, an arm of the American Psychological Association, awarded Enright the 2022 American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Impact in Psychology.
This spring, Enright gave a series of talks across the country and abroad on the latest developments in his research, including at Harvard University and the World Congress in Laboratory Medicine in Italy. He has also been cited in a number of recent media reports on his work, including in Men’s Health, the Washington Post, and Wisconsin Public Radio.
Read the entire On Wisconsin feature story about Enright’s work here.