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Since time immemorial people have been encouraged to 'forgive and forget' in order to live a happy life.

But now seems there is also scientific truth to the old adage because forgiving a wrong makes it easier for a person to move on, a new study claims.

Researchers also discovered that people always remember hurtful details if they have not forgiven a perpetrator - even if they are asked to forget an incident.

Forgive and forget: A new study has found that forgiving a wrong makes it easier for you to forget it and move on with your life. Previous studies have shown that learning to forgive others can have positive benefits for an individual's physical and mental health

Dr Saima Noreen, of the University of St Andrews, Scotland said: 'It is well established learning to forgive others can have positive benefits for an individual's physical and mental health.

'The ability to forget upsetting memories may provide an effective coping strategy that enables people to move on with their lives.'

Overcoming strong negative emotions against an enemy and quashing impulses for vengeance - processes that are critical to forgiveness - are seen by psychiatrists as a function of executive control.

Research suggests that this mental function is also involved in our ability to dismiss something when we are motivated to forget it.

Dr Noreen examined whether this cognitive mechanism might link forgiveness and forgetting.

Moving on from hurt: 'The ability to forget upsetting memories may provide an effective coping strategy that enables people to move on with their lives,' the experts behind the experiment said. A stock image is shown

She and her team recruited volunteers to read 40 hypothetical scenarios containing wrongs including infidelity, slander and theft and asked them if they would forgive each transgression if they were the victim.

Less than two weeks later the volunteers read a few of the scenarios again, but this time each was accompanied by a neutral cue word written in either red or green.

After learning these pairings, the participants were presented with some of the words and instructed to recall the related event when it was green and to avoid thinking about it if red.

The technique is often used in memory research and trains people to forget specific information or details. The researchers wanted to see whether forgiveness might affect the forgetting process.

The experiment revealed that when the participants had forgiven a hurtful act, they were more likely to forget it when they had been asked to do so.

Holding a grudge: The experiment revealed that when the participants had forgiven a hurtful act, they were more likely to forget it when they had been asked to do so. But they always remembered a scenario they had not forgiven (illustrated with a stock image), even when they had been told to forget it

But they always remembered a scenario they had not forgiven, even when they had been told to forget it.

The findings, published in Psychological Science, suggest forgiveness may facilitate intentional forgetting by helping people to suppress details about wrongdoings perpetrated against them.

So, while true forgiveness may be difficult to accomplish, it could make forgetting – and moving on with life - easier.

'This research is only coming into fruition and it is likely the relationship between forgiveness and forgetting is bidirectional and far more complex over longer periods of time,' Dr Noreen said.

'We hope in time that new fields of enquiry may combine forgetting and forgiveness based interventions that might, in turn, give rise to powerful therapeutic tools that will enable people to "forgive and forget" more effectively.'

Previous research has shown excusing people for wrongdoings can actually boost your health.  People who let go of their anger were less likely to see spikes in their blood pressure.