Forgiveness in Adolescents: A Review of Students' Emotional Maturity in Padang City

Abstract

Forgiveness plays an important role in maintaining interpersonal relationships and reducing conflicts that commonly arise during adolescence. This study aimed to empirically examine the relationship between emotional maturity and forgiveness among tenth-grade students of SMA Kartika I-5 Padang. The instruments used in this study were the Emotional Maturity Scale developed by Goleman (as cited in Fitriany et al., 2022) and the Forgiveness Scale developed by McCullough (as cited in Putri et al., 2024).The sample was determined using a simple random sampling technique, involving 155 respondents. The validity of the Emotional Maturity Scale, as indicated by the Corrected Item-Total Correlation, ranged from 0.328 to 0.801, with a reliability coefficient of 0.928. Meanwhile, the Forgiveness Scale showed Corrected Item-Total Correlation values ranging from 0.313 to 0.625, with a reliability coefficient of 0.894. The results of the data analysis revealed a correlation coefficient of 0.654 with a significance level of 0.000, indicating a statistically significant relationship. These findings suggest a strong and positive relationship between emotional maturity and forgiveness among the students. Furthermore, emotional maturity contributed 43% to forgiveness, indicating that the remaining 57% is influenced by other factors not examined in this study.