The purpose of this study was to examine the mediating effects of anger rumination between decentering and forgiveness, and the moderating effect of reflective response style.

The subjects of this study were 231 college students who were assessed by the Experiences Questionnaire (EQ), the Response to Depressed mood Questionnaire (RDQ), the Korean Anger Rumination Scale (K-ARS), and the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI).

First, anger rumination partially mediated the relationship between decentering and forgiveness, and subfactors of anger rumination showed distinct mediating effect on the relationship between decentering and forgiveness. Rumination of cause did not have any mediating effect on the relationship between the decentering and forgiveness. But rumination of revenge showed a full mediating effect. Anger memories rumination showed partial mediating effect. Second, the total score of reflective response style had moderating effect on the relation between decentering and anger rumination. Objective reflection, which was a subfactor of reflective response style also showed moderating effect, but the feature of effect was different.

These results suggested the importance of decentering and objective reflection in order to increase forgiveness. The implication of this study and further suggestions for future studies were discussed.