The Influence of Relationship Quality and Forgiveness on Happiness

Happiness is described as; a state when a person experiencing positive emotions more, negative emotions less and having a high satisfactory life. A relationship quality is defined as; an individual’s behaviors as a whole, towards another individual or individuals people. Whereas, forgiveness means: when a person is observes that he/she has been treated rationally with injustice, they act to their offenders with a basis of mercy, unconditional value, generousness towards and help instead of feeling anger and revenge. The aim of this research is; to determine the effect levels of relationship quality and forgiveness on happiness, individually as well as together. This research was carried out by the use of, relationship scan model among adults who are 18 to 60 years old. In this research 3 instruments were used; “Relationship Quality Scale” that has was developed by Pierce et al., (1991), “Heartland Forgiveness Scale” that was developed by Thompson et al., (2005) and Hills and Argyle’s (2002) “Oxford Happiness Scale”. As a result of the research, it was determined; at least half of the person’s happiness can be explained by the individual’s quality of relationship. When the three factors of the quality of relationship were evaluated in terms of explaining their effect of happiness; dimension of conflict came first while dimension of depth came second. Forgiveness can explain 25 % of happiness. Also, quality of relationship and forgiveness were found to be effecting happiness 55 % together. As a conclusion, this research proved that; quality of relationship can effect an individual’s happiness in direct proportion