Conflict Resolution Styles, Educational Status, and Tendency to Forgive Among Residents of Jos North

This study investigated conflict resolution styles and educational status as predictors of the tendency to forgive among residents of Jos North Local Government Area, Plateau State, Nigeria. Grounded in Rahim’s five-style conflict framework and the Heartland Forgiveness model, a cross-sectional survey design was adopted. Using a multistage sampling approach with field-level adaptations, data were collected from 615 adult respondents using the Conflict Resolution Styles Scale and the Heartland Forgiveness Scale Extended Version (HFS-E). Multiple regression analysis and one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were employed to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. The results revealed that conflict resolution styles jointly and significantly predicted all dimensions of the tendency to forgive willingness, motivation, ability, and preference accounting for 16.6% to 34.5% of the variance. Specifically, integrating, obliging, and compromising styles emerged as positive predictors, with the integrating style serving as the strongest predictor. Conversely, educational status showed no statistically significant influence on the tendency to forgive. These findings highlight that behavioral and relational approaches to conflict management are far more critical to fostering forgiveness than formal educational attainment in post-conflict, socially diverse settings.