Can artificial intelligence help catch cyber fraud before it happens — or will it be used to commit more fraud?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a fascinating and somewhat terrifying dual-edged sword in the realm of cyber fraud.
It absolutely has the potential to help catch fraud before it happens, but it is also undeniably being leveraged by criminals to commit more sophisticated and widespread fraud.

How AI Can Help Catch Cyber Fraud Before It Happens (Defense):
AI and Machine Learning (ML) are transforming fraud detection and prevention, moving from reactive to proactive measures.

Real-Time Anomaly Detection and Behavioral Analytics:
Proactive Monitoring: AI systems constantly monitor user behavior (login patterns, device usage, geographic location, typing cadence, transaction history) and system activity in real-time. They establish a "normal" baseline for each user and identify any deviations instantaneously.

Predictive Analytics: By analyzing vast datasets of past fraudulent and legitimate activities, AI can identify subtle, emerging patterns that signal potential fraud attempts before they fully materialize. For example, if a user suddenly attempts a large transfer to an unusual beneficiary from a new device in a high-risk country, AI can flag or block it immediately.

Examples: A bank's AI might notice a user trying to log in from Taiwan and then, moments later, attempting a transaction from a different IP address in Europe. This could trigger an immediate MFA challenge or block.

Advanced Phishing and Malware Detection:
Natural Language Processing (NLP): AI-powered NLP can analyze email content, social media messages, and text messages for linguistic cues, sentiment, and patterns associated with phishing attempts, even if they're expertly crafted by other AIs. It can detect subtle inconsistencies or malicious intent that humans might miss.

Polymorphic Malware: AI can help detect polymorphic malware (malware that constantly changes its code to evade detection) by identifying its behavioral patterns rather than just its signature.

Identifying Fake Content: AI can be trained to detect deepfakes (fake audio, video, images) by looking for minute inconsistencies or digital artifacts, helping to flag sophisticated impersonation scams before they deceive victims.

Threat Intelligence and Pattern Recognition:
Rapid Analysis: AI can rapidly process and correlate massive amounts of threat intelligence data from various sources (dark web forums, security bulletins, past incidents) to identify new fraud typologies and attack vectors.

Automated Response: When a threat is identified, AI can automate responses like blocking malicious IPs, updating blacklists, or issuing real-time alerts to affected users or systems.

Enhanced Identity Verification and Biometrics:
AI-driven biometric authentication (facial recognition, voice analysis, fingerprint scanning) makes it significantly harder for fraudsters to impersonate legitimate users, especially during remote onboarding or high-value transactions.

AI can analyze digital identity documents for signs of forgery and compare them with biometric data in real-time.

Reduced False Positives:
Traditional rule-based fraud detection often generates many false positives (legitimate transactions flagged as suspicious), leading to customer friction and operational inefficiencies. AI, with its adaptive learning, can significantly reduce false positives, allowing legitimate transactions to proceed smoothly while still catching actual fraud.

How AI Can Be Used to Commit More Fraud (Offense):
The same advancements that empower fraud detection also empower fraudsters. This is the "AI arms race" in cybersecurity.

Hyper-Personalized Phishing and Social Engineering:
Generative AI (LLMs): Tools like ChatGPT can generate perfectly worded, grammatically correct, and highly personalized phishing emails, texts, and social media messages. They can mimic corporate tone, individual writing styles, and even leverage publicly available information (from social media) to make scams incredibly convincing, eliminating the "Nigerian Prince" typo giveaways.

Automated Campaigns: AI can automate the generation and distribution of thousands or millions of unique phishing attempts, scaling attacks exponentially.

Sophisticated Impersonation (Deepfakes):
Deepfake Audio/Video: AI enables criminals to create highly realistic deepfake audio and video of executives, family members, or public figures. This is used in "CEO fraud" or "grandparent scams" where a cloned voice or video call convinces victims to transfer money urgently. (e.g., the $25 million Hong Kong deepfake scam).

Synthetic Identities: AI can generate entirely fake personas with realistic photos, bios, and even documents, which can then be used to open fraudulent bank accounts, apply for loans, or bypass KYC checks.

Advanced Malware and Evasion:
Polymorphic and Evasive Malware: AI can be used to develop malware that adapts and changes its code in real-time to evade traditional antivirus software and intrusion detection systems.

Automated Vulnerability Scanning: AI can rapidly scan networks and applications to identify vulnerabilities (including zero-days) that can be exploited for attacks.

Automated Credential Stuffing and Account Takeovers:
AI can automate the process of trying stolen usernames and passwords across numerous websites, mimicking human behavior to avoid detection by bot management systems.

It can analyze breached credential databases to identify patterns and target high-value accounts more efficiently.

Enhanced Fraud Infrastructure:
AI-powered chatbots can engage victims in real-time, adapting their responses to manipulate them over extended conversations, making romance scams and investment scams more effective and scalable.

AI can optimize money laundering routes by identifying the least risky pathways for illicit funds.

The AI Arms Race:
The reality is that AI will be used for both. The fight against cyber fraud is becoming an AI arms race, where defenders must continually develop and deploy more advanced AI to counter the increasingly sophisticated AI used by attackers.

For individuals and organizations in Taiwan, this means:
Investing in AI-powered security solutions: Banks and large companies must use AI to fight AI.

Continuous Learning: Everyone needs to stay informed about the latest AI-powered scam tactics, as they evolve rapidly.

Focus on Human Element: While AI can detect patterns, human critical thinking, skepticism, and verification remain essential, especially when faced with emotionally manipulative AI-generated content.

Collaboration: Sharing threat intelligence (including AI-driven fraud methods) between industry, government, and cybersecurity researchers is more critical than ever.

The future of cyber fraud will be heavily influenced by AI, making the landscape both more dangerous for victims and more challenging for those trying to protect them.

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https://corkroo.com/thread/14945
Elon Musk escalates feud with Trump: 'Time to drop the really big bomb'

Elon Musk alleged that President Donald Trump's name is mentioned in undisclosed classified files related to the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as a feud between Trump and the world's richest man devolved into deeply personal attacks.

"Time to drop the really big bomb," Musk said in a June 5 post on X. "realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!"

लैंड रोवर डिफेंडर एक पावरफुल, स्टाइलिश और ऑफ-रोडिंग एसयूवी है, जो अपने बेहतरीन परफॉर्मेंस, शानदार डिज़ाइन और एडवांस टेक्नोलॉजी के लिए जानी जाती है। यह गाड़ी सिर्फ सड़क पर ही नहीं, बल्कि हर तरह के खराब रास्तों, ऊबड़-खाबड़ ट्रैक और ऑफ-रोडिंग एडवेंचर के लिए बनी है। अगर आप एक रफ-एंड-टफ SUV की तलाश में हैं, तो लैंड रोवर डिफेंडर एक शानदार विकल्प हो सकता है।
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#Virginia's aggressive approach to #reckless driving aims to enhance road safety, but first-time offenders may find the penalties excessive. The law may be more effective with a stronger emphasis on education and safe driving techniques. A balanced approach could benefit both public safety and first-time offenders.

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TRUST-
After a Breach of Trust Don’t Make It Worse.
Let's avoid the common pitfalls.

KEY POINTS-
Communication is key, especially when trust has been broken.
Defensiveness is common and damaging.
A guideline for constructive discussions about trust violations include staying focused on the issue at hand.

A trust may begin as a leap of faith, but ultimately, it is not a gift. It must be earned. Communicating is always very important, but this is especially critical when a violation occurs.

Specific conversations must occur to mend a broken trust. Through unmistakable effort, the offending partner must demonstrate that they are committed and that it is emotionally safe to be intimate with them.

Defensiveness Is Common and Damaging
Talking productively in an emotional crisis is not easy but essential. Moreover, the emotional fallout from a broken trust is not usually limited to the offended partner. The offender may also feel bad. Feeling distressed, they may react openly and validate the offended partner’s feelings, clearing the way for the breach to be repaired. This is an admirable response but, unfortunately, not common. More often, the partner who has violated trust reacts defensively, adding insult to injury.

Now, the offended partner not only feels hurt and anger, but the sense of betrayal is heightened by denial, distortion, or minimizing.

Rather than heal the wound of betrayal, the lack of openness by the offender will almost surely erode the trust base further. The couple will inevitably move toward increased and unproductive conflict, either over the areas directly involved in the source of mistrust—lying or an extramarital involvement, for example—or over a wide range of lesser issues. In either case, the relationship unravels.

Talking It Out Sensitively
The point is that there are two main ways for the offender (and the offended) to make things worse when confronted with a trust violation: One is to continue lying and underplay the breach. The other is to erupt, to emote without restraint.

When a man or woman has too many internal conversations, playing out the issues in their mind, they probably do not have enough trust with their partner. If they are screaming, hurling insults, and looking to vent without concern for the impact, not briefly, but mostly, the relationship is guaranteed to deteriorate.

Guidelines for Constructive Discussions
Stay focused. No fair dredging up mistakes made twenty years ago or complaining about how much the in-laws are hated. A fight is not an opportunity to rehash old grievances. Stick to the issue, or the discussion will surely sink from the weight of the problems.

Define issues. Be clear and specific about the problem. This will help you stay on track.

Listen and listen. Don’t just pause until it’s your turn to speak again, with your mind formulating the next sentences while your partner talks. Being defensive is a sure path to alienation.
Agreement is not essential. You don’t have to agree, but if you validate a hurt partner’s feelings sincerely, your partner will likely feel that you get it. In other words, be agreeable. To do otherwise is to risk prolonging the potential healing process. Lie? That would be stupid.

Don’t interrupt. You can be angry without being rude or bullying.
Don’t personalize. Stay with the issue rather than attack the person. Contending that your partner betrayed you in some manner is legitimate. Calling your partner names, belittling them, or verbally assaulting them is not constructive.

Recognize “his” and “her” conflict styles. Men and women have different conflict styles as well as intimacy styles. Respect the differences. A man may, for example, feel emotionally flooded and need a time-out, while a woman may view that as withdrawal. If the man reassures her that he is simply taking a few minutes to “regroup,” his partner will likely abide.

Bear in mind: A critical action on the trust-breaker’s part, to reassure their efforts to restore trust are sincere, is the willingness to delve into him or herself, confront the personal issues that lead to trust breaches, and acknowledge them openly and responsibly. And, of course, going forward with integrity is essential.

When Sexual Assault Victims Are More Likely to Be Blamed.
Research examines why some sexual assault victims are blamed for their own victimization.
Reviewed by Tyler Woods

KEY POINTS-
Victim-blaming means ignoring the offender’s role and instead holding the victim responsible for the harm they have suffered.
In a recent study, participants blamed females dressed in red for being sexually assaulted more than those wearing green.
Women with strong just-world beliefs are more likely to blame a victim of assault dressed in red and to believe she deserved the mistreatment.

Whenever something goes wrong, we look for someone to hold responsible, someone to blame, whether others or ourselves.

Sometimes this results in victim-blaming, which means holding a victim at least partially responsible for their mistreatment—based on the assumption that he or she somehow caused the event or deserved the harm.

One example is claiming that a woman’s rape allegations are false. Or to say a rape victim was asking for it because of her revealing dress or flirtatious behavior.

Indeed, research shows that women who have a long history of sexual activity, wear sexy and provocative clothes, or drink heavily are often viewed as more culpable for the assault.

But might blame attribution also be affected by the color of a woman’s clothing?

An answer is provided by Brown and collaborators, whose research was published in the April 2023 issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.

Their investigation explored the link between victim-blaming and the color of the victim’s clothing (green versus red).

Investigating Victim-Blaming and the Color of Clothing
Sample: Two hundred twenty-one undergraduate students (155 women) from the Northeastern U.S.; the average age of 20; 45 percent Caucasian.

Methods and Measures
Target attire: Participants were instructed to read a vignette describing a woman who “experienced an attempted sexual assault from a man she met at a party after ‘flirting passionately’ with him and leaving the party together.”

They were also presented with the individual’s picture, which showed a young Caucasian female with her face blurred (purportedly to protect her identity).

About half the sample saw her wearing a red shirt; the other half saw her wearing green.

Target evaluation: The pictured woman was evaluated regarding her interest in sex (i.e., sexual receptivity) and blameworthiness for being sexually assaulted.

To assess just world beliefs, the Belief in a Just World Scale was used (e.g., “I feel that people get what they deserve”).

Blaming the Rape Victim Dressed in Red
Blame attribution, the results showed, “was higher when the target wore red.” Interestingly, this was true “only among female perceivers.” Why?

One explanation involves competition and intrasexual rivalry.

Namely, other women may perceive the choice of red clothing as a show of sexual intent. Therefore, they see the woman in red as a potential competitor or threat to their own intimate relationships and behave with hostility toward her.

This hostility can take many forms, such as trying to damage the woman in red's reputation or, if she experiences assault, engaging in victim-blaming.

The data also suggested victim-blaming attributions were “most apparent among women with heightened just-world beliefs.”

Just-world beliefs may “serve to maintain women’s sense of control in group living based on the implicit assumption that sociosexually unrestricted women are more likely to be victimized.”

Note: Unrestricted sociosexual orientation refers to having a greater interest in casual sex.

Another finding was that men’s just-world beliefs did not influence their tendency to find the woman in red at fault. Why?

Perhaps men are already more likely than women to blame a rape victim and believe she “was asking for it” or “should have expected it, dressed like that.”

Or maybe the extent of just-world beliefs plays a smaller role in victim-blaming than intrasexual competition.

From an evolutionary perspective, relationships with sexually assertive and promiscuous women may also threaten men's power and control. For instance, such a relationship increases paternity uncertainty (i.e., not knowing if a child born to their female partner is their own).

Takeaway
The color red tends to make women more attractive to men, but it appears to affect blame attribution in sexual victimization as well.

Specifically, the study by Brown et al. found:
Female victims dressed in red (rather than green) are more likely to be blamed for experiencing sexual assault.
Both men and women perceive female individuals who wear red clothing as signaling sexual receptivity.
Victim-blaming is most apparent among women who believe in a just and fair world.

One explanation of victim blaming is female intrasexual competition (e.g., mate attraction, mate guarding).
It is important to be aware of the effects of a woman’s attire on culpability judgments in cases of sexual assault and rape so that we can treat all victims with fairness, sensitivity, compassion, respect, and dignity. And not to excuse or justify criminal conduct.

Personality Tests.

The psychology of personality promises to help people better understand themselves and those they know in relation to others. Personality tests, which typically take the form of questionnaires, are the tools for doing that. These measures of personality are also used in scientific research to explore how individual differences in various traits correspond with other aspects of people’s lives.

Personality tests are only “tests” in a loose sense: There is no right or wrong answer to their questions. And the best personality measures are not “pass/fail”—they don’t sort individuals into one category or another, but instead place them on a series of trait continuums depending on how they compare to other people.

How Valid Personality Tests Work
Widely Used Personality Tests
How Valid Personality Tests Work
There are countless personality tests. Even a well-established set of traits like the Big Five can be assessed using a number of different questionnaires. Still, scientifically validated personality tests tend to have some features in common.

Test-takers typically read a series of items that describe a person and indicate the degree to which the description applies to them—or another person, if they are rating someone else’s personality. These lists can be as short as 10 items and as long as a couple of hundred (longer tests tend to provide more reliable results), and the items can be single adjectives or full statements about one’s nature.

For example, the second version of the Big Five Inventory includes the following statements, along with several dozen others, each of which is used to assess one of the Big Five traits:

Is complex, a deep thinker. (openness)
Is reliable, can always be counted on. (conscientiousness)
Is talkative. (extroversion)
Is compassionate, has a soft heart. (agreeableness)
Keeps their emotions under control. (emotional stability/neuroticism)
When the ratings for the various items are totaled, the scores allow for comparisons between the individual and average scores based on samples of other test-takers. In this way, one can find out that they rate above average on openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness, low on extroversion, and high on neuroticism—or any other mixture of trait evaluations.

While Big Five tests like the BFI-2 are relatively comprehensive, providing a broad picture of a person’s personality, there are many other questionnaires, some of which (such as the Narcissistic Personality Inventory) focus on a specific trait. Other personality measures, like the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, are administered through an interview with a trained professional, rather than with a self-test.

Widely Used Personality Tests
Below are some of the most well-known and commonly used tools for assessing personality. Many are referred to as “inventories,” reflecting a collection of items to which a person responds, each one tied to different dimensions of personality. These measurement instruments are used in a range of contexts, from psychology studies to employee evaluation, and—importantly—some are better supported than others by scientific research.

Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) is the latest version of a tool for assessing the Big Five personality traits, which it labels as Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Negative Emotionality, and Open-Mindedness, as well as facets of each. It is employed in psychological research and can be used for personal assessment.

The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) is a revised version of a tool originally named after the Big Five trait factors of Neuroticism, Extroversion, and Openness to Experience, though the current tool assesses Agreeableness and Conscientiousness as well, plus 30 more specific traits within each factor. It is used in psychological research.
The HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R) is used to measure six dimensions of personality, based on the HEXACO model. They include factors that correspond to the Big Five, as well as the factor of Honesty–Humility. It is employed in psychological research and can be used for personal assessment.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is used primarily to assess symptoms of mental illness and maladaptive personality traits. The latest version (MMPI-2-RF) includes scales related to aggression, social avoidance, self-doubt, and other specific problems, as well as scales for broader, overarching factors. The MMPI is used for research and in applications such as mental health care, forensic evaluation, and candidate assessment for public safety jobs.

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is an instrument designed to measure psychopathic traits, such as impulsivity and lack of remorse or guilt, in criminal offenders or others in forensic settings. Unlike personality tests that involve self-report questionnaires, it is meant to be administered through an interview and evaluation of the individual by a clinical professional.
Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), like the Hare checklist, is designed to assess a person’s levels of psychopathic traits, but it was developed for use with non-criminals and its results are based on responses to questionnaire items.
The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) is used to specifically assess an individual’s level of narcissism, often in a research context, though it can also be used for self-evaluation. It is not used for diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is based on criteria in the DSM-V.

The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) is based on the five-factor model and intended for predicting work performance, including in job candidates. Its scales are organized based on work-relevant characteristics such as ambition, sociability, and interpersonal sensitivity.
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assigns individuals a psychological “type” summarized in four of eight possible letters: Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I); Sensing (S) or Intuiting (N); Thinking (T) or Feeling (F); and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P). The results combine into one of 16 types, such as ENTJ or ISFP. The MBTI is widely used in business—such as for employee evaluation or during seminars—and unofficial versions are available for personal use, though scientists often cite its limitations, including that its separate “types” oversimplify personality differences.

DISC or DiSC is the name given to a collection of personality assessments that assign individuals one of four types, or a blend of the types: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). Like the Myers-Briggs, it is promoted for use in learning about individual differences within organizations, but is generally not favored by contemporary personality scientists.

Enneagram-related tests are based on the concept of the Enneagram of Personality and assign personality descriptions based on nine primary types and often secondary types called “wings.” While the Enneagram has been promoted in business and spiritual contexts, it lacks empirical support and is infrequently used by personality scientists.
Which personality tests are best?

Any personality test can be fun and intriguing. But from a scientific perspective, tools such as the Big Five Inventory (and others based on the five-factor model) and those used by psychological scientists, such as the MMPI, are likely to provide the most reliable and valid results. One thing that sets many of these tests apart is more nuanced scoring. The Myers-Briggs and other tests are used to assign people personality “types,” but traits are not black-or-white: the research suggests that they are more like a spectrum, with high and low ends.

Are there any perfect personality tests?
While measures of the five (or six) proposed personality factors offer a relatively comprehensive and nuanced view of personality, they have limitations, too. Research suggests they may provide less reliable results outside of Western, industrialized countries—and that the major factors may not manifest in the same way everywhere in the world.

How can I obtain a personality test?
That depends on the test. Some, like the Big Five Inventory, can be taken online. Others, like the NEO Personality Inventory or the Myers-Briggs, must be acquired from a publisher for a fee—though brief or adapted versions of such tests may be available online.

How do I know whether an online test is valid?
In addition to the above descriptions of each kind of test, consider the source of any online test. A test provided directly by a scientist at a well-known university may be more empirically supported and informative than one offered by someone with no scientific credentials. Tests that provided nuanced scores (in terms of percentiles, for example) are likely to be more valid than those that give you a specific “type.”

FORGIVENESS-
The Power of Forgiveness.
New evidence from a randomized trial.
Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

KEY POINTS-
Forgiveness can be understood as replacing ill will towards an offender with goodwill.
Forgiveness is different from excusing, reconciling, or foregoing justice.
A randomized trial of a forgiveness workbook indicates beneficial effects on mental health and flourishing.

We have all been hurt by others. Sometimes those wounds last for a long time.

It can be difficult to know how to deal with such hurts, or with those who have inflicted them. One approach is to bury and suppress the wounds, but often they then remain with us and re-emerge. Another approach is to let the wounds fester, to ruminate upon them and upon anger, and possibly seek revenge. Sometimes that revenge may help pacify one’s outrage; at other times it may not. An alternative approach to dealing with the hurts we all experience is forgiveness.

We might define “forgiveness” as the replacement of ill will towards an offender with goodwill. Conceived as such, forgiveness is distinct from excusing or condoning the action; it is distinct from reconciliation; and it does not require foregoing justice. Forgiveness does not entail ignoring issues of responsibility and accountability. One can forgive an offender and hope for his or her ultimate good, while also pursuing a just outcome. One can also forgive an offender without necessarily seeking a restored relationship. This point is especially important in cases, say, of repeated violence or abuse, wherein the ending of the relationship may be best for the victim and offender alike. Likewise, because forgiveness and reconciliation are not identical, one can also forgive even if the offender has passed away. In conflicts, often both parties are hurt, and forgiveness can be helpful in both directions.

Prior research on forgiveness has included randomized trials of forgiveness interventions and longitudinal analyses of observational data. This research has indicated that forgiveness lowers depression and anxiety. Forgiveness can, over time, help free the victim from the hurt, rumination, and suppression, and from the offender. And again, one can pursue forgiveness and justice simultaneously.

Most prior forgiveness interventions have required many sessions with a trained therapist. In our most recent randomized trial study, we have examined whether the past 30 years of work in clinical psychology on forgiveness could be distilled into a self-guided workbook that could be effective at promoting forgiveness and improving mental health. If so, given the ease of dissemination of such workbooks, the public health consequences could be profound.

REACH Forgiveness Model
The workbook we studied employed Everett Worthington’s REACH model of forgiveness where each letter of REACH stands for a different part of the process:

R: Recall the hurt and let the emotions associated with it surface; do not suppress them.
E: Empathize with the offender, trying to understand their reasons for the action, without condoning the action or invaliding one’s feelings.
A: Altruistic gift; realize that forgiveness is an altruistic gift that can be offered or withheld, and realize also that one has oneself sometimes done wrong and has been forgiven.
C: Commit to forgive, to try to replace ill will with goodwill.
H: Hold on to the forgiveness, realizing that it takes time for emotions to heal and that sometimes the anger will return.

The workbook was developed by selecting the most effective exercises from prior research that could be completed in two to three hours, to help people who want to forgive but were having trouble doing so.

Our Forgiveness Randomized Trial
We carried out a waitlist randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of this forgiveness workbook. The study had about 4,500 participants in five relatively high-conflict countries: Columbia, South Africa, Ukraine, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.

In a waitlist randomized trial design, participants are randomized to receive the intervention either immediately, or after a delay (in this case, two weeks), and then outcomes are measured right before the second group gets the workbook. Given prior research on forgiveness, it seemed unethical to permanently withhold the workbooks from participants in the trial, so a waitlist design seemed best.

Happily, the workbook was indeed effective at increasing forgiveness. Those who received the forgiveness workbook immediately reported experiencing higher levels of forgiveness after two weeks than those who were randomized to delayed receipt. Moreover, there was also evidence from the trial that the forgiveness workbook lowered depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms, and that it increased hope.

There was also evidence that it increased various aspects of flourishing—happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and even a sense of financial security—as assessed by our flourishing measure. The formal paper on our randomized trial is currently under journal peer review, but given the importance of this work, and our upcoming forgiveness conference (described below), we decided to release a pre-print on the study and more details are available here.

Public Health Implications
Given the important effects of forgiveness on mental health and well-being, and the existence of an effectively costless, easily disseminated self-guided forgiveness workbook, forgiveness should arguably be considered a public health issue. The public health impact of a particular exposure or phenomenon is sometimes assessed as a function of how prevalent or common it is and the size of its effects on the outcomes that we care about.

Something that is both common and has large effects on health outcomes will shape population health. On these grounds, forgiveness is important. The experience of being wronged is very common; and forgiveness, which can be fostered by the use of the workbook, can itself improve mental health and well-being.

If the workbooks were disseminated in clinical, school, and workplace settings, and if local, national, and international efforts were made to promote forgiveness and utilize such resources, we argue that more people could forgive and reap the benefits of improved mental health. (The forgiveness workbook can be downloaded here and freely distributed. I have personally used it myself and have found it very helpful.)

Difficult Questions, and Our Conference
There are of course difficult moral questions around forgiveness that are important in their own right, but also important in thinking about forgiveness in the context of public health. Are there limits to forgiveness? What are the moral conditions under which forgiveness might be considered appropriate?

While there is certainly no universal consensus, arguments have been put forward that, provided the victim does not deny the wrong that was done or its implications or deny or suppress feelings about it, forgiveness—understood as replacing ill will towards the offender with goodwill—can always be morally appropriate. Again, forgiveness does not entail foregoing justice, and this distinction is critical especially if forgiveness is promoted in clinical or community settings, and in thinking about the morality of forgiveness.

But what if the wrongdoer does not acknowledge the wrong or does not repent? Forgiveness—understood as replacing ill will towards the offender with goodwill—can still take place. And such forgiveness may still help free the victim from the offender. Conversely, if something you say or do deeply hurts or offends another person, even if you believe you did nothing wrong, it can still be helpful to express sorrow for the other’s pain. In some cases, this itself might facilitate healing and might help the other person to forgive.

These are, however, difficult questions, and to help try to address these, the Human Flourishing Program, in collaboration with Harvard’s Memorial Church, the Making Caring Common Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard Catholic Forum, the Religion Conflict and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation, are hosting an Interdisciplinary Conference on Forgiveness to bring together scholars and practitioners from psychology, law, peace studies, philosophy, theology, and public health to ponder these and others important and difficult issues surrounding forgiveness. The conference will be held at Harvard University April 21-22, 2023, and is free and open to the public.

Enmity and Love
Forgiveness perhaps also points us towards the need for love within community, and a restoration of love when things have gone wrong. It arguably even points towards a need for a love of one’s enemies, of those who have a settled ill will towards oneself, or those towards whom one is inclined to have settled ill will.

Our society has become increasingly polarized. We will not agree on everything, and those disagreements can be important. And yet, it is important also to recognize the humanity of those we disagree with, to understand those differences, and to work towards finding those aspects of what is good that we can agree on and seek together. We can at the same time seek to correct the other, while seeking to be corrected ourselves.

There is a paradoxical logic of love for one’s enemies, and forgiveness facilitates this logic and love. By replacing ill will towards another with goodwill, forgiveness may prompt prosocial action that may itself propagate, thereby potentially helping to heal division. Love—love for one's enemy—seeks both the good of the other (sometimes including correction), but also, when possible, a desire for reconciliation. Love extends beyond even forgiveness. Our society needs to foster a greater love of neighbor, and love of enemy.

People in many parts of the world right now are observing “Holy Week,” a remembrance of what Christians believe to be the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The account given in the Gospel of Luke is that Jesus, after having been nailed to a cross, cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I hope that we may embody that same spirit of forgiveness. However, may we do so also in full recognition that the other side may view us as offenders, as having nailed them to the cross. Amidst our difficulties and tensions, may we pursue a spirit of forgiveness that seeks understanding and love, peace and reconciliation.