Moral Psychology and the Ethics of Forgiveness in Post-Conflict Communities in Plateau State: An Empirical-Philosophical Study

This study provides an empirical-philosophical analysis of moral psychology and the ethics of forgiveness in post-conflict communities in Plateau State, located in Nigeria's North Central geopolitical zone. Forgiveness is a philosophically complex moral concept that has been analysed by Charles Griswold, Jeffrie Murphy, and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, but its psychological dynamics and philosophical dimensions in African post-conflict community contexts have been insufficiently studied, constituting the gap this research addresses. A mixed-methods design is employed, combining systematic philosophical analysis of forgiveness ethics with a structured psychological survey of 300 respondents in conflict-affected communities in Barkin Ladi, Jos North, and Riyom local government areas, supplemented by 35 in-Philosophyh qualitative interviews with community leaders, trauma counsellors, and philosophy academics in the state. Regression analysis examines the relationship between philosophical understanding of forgiveness and willingness to reconcile with perpetrators of inter-communal violence. Findings reveal that a communitarian conception of forgiveness, grounded in the restoration of relationships and social healing rather than individual moral transformation, is both more philosophically appropriate to the Plateau context and more practically effective as a reconciliation mechanism than liberal individualist forgiveness models. The study contributes an original empirically validated philosophical model of communitarian forgiveness for post-conflict African societies. Keywords: forgiveness ethics, moral psychology, post-conflict reconciliation, Plateau State, communitarian philosophy.