Although prosocial behavior has been regarded as a critical predictor of positive peer relationships and teacher–student relationships, more interventional studies are needed to more confidently determine causality. Dizi Gui instruction, a Confucian classical approach, was used in the current research as a prosocial behavior intervention to test whether it would improve Chinese adolescents’ peer relationships and teacher–student relationships through the increase of prosocial behavior. Four classes of fifth grade students (N = 242, 118 males, 124 females) participated. The results showed that the Dizi Gui instruction effectively increased students’ prosocial behavior, which in turn, improved their peer relationships and teacher–student relationships.

Despite the conceptual link between love and forgiveness, empirical evidence for the relationship between the two is scarce. Also, controversy exists surrounding the use of a self-evaluated forgiveness tendency as a measure of dispositional forgiveness. One hundred adults filled out an online survey to provide the data for this study. Compassionate love, commitment to forgiveness, and valuing forgiveness were moderately associated with dispositional forgiveness. Compassionate love predicted dispositional forgiveness over and above all other measures. The feasibility of measuring dispositional forgiveness accounting for the occurrences of actual transgressions and the presence of compassionate love among those showing forgivingness are discussed.

Forgiveness education is more than the teaching of forgiveness. Since forgiveness education cultivates virtuous characters and the best self as the moral self, it sets the foundation for moral agency development. Based on a review of research and the literature about the psychological processes of forgiveness and moral agency, this article illustrates how the forgiveness virtue and moral agency operate and enhance each other for their common roots in the moral self. Due to their symbiotic relationship, promoting moral agency development in forgiveness education is beneficial for the cultivation of mature forgivers, mature moral agents, and good citizens with virtuous characters. To maximize the effectiveness and the impacts of forgiveness education, the GMIRA method is proposed, which involves setting the learning goal of living and being the best self, social modeling towards the goal, and blending the holistic moral agency concept into the existing forgiveness curriculum using the IRA (invitation, reflection, and assessment) strategies. Since moral agency is adaptive, the IRA methods can be flexibly applied to fit individual developmental needs across time and social-cultural contexts in all types of education. This novel idea is open for future research.