Search results

The present study examined the longitudinal impact of perceived self-regulatory efficacy and parental communication on violent conduct. Adolescents' perceived efficacy to resist peer pressure for transgressive activities counteracted engagement in violent conduct both directly and by fostering open communication with parents. Parental communication was linked to violent conduct concurrently but not longitudinally. There were gender differences in level of engagement in violent activities, but the causal structures were the same. Perceived self-regulatory efficacy contributed to violent conduct both concurrently and longitudinally after controlling for prior level of violent conduct and openness of parental communication.

Italian husbands (n= 79) and wives (n= 92) from long‐term marriages provided data on the role of marital quality, affective reactions, and attributions for hypothetical partner transgressions in promoting forgiveness. Structural equation modeling revealed that, as hypothesized, positive marital quality was predictive of more benign attributions that, in turn, facilitated forgiveness both directly and indirectly via affective reactions and emotional empathy. Unexpectedly, marital quality did not account for unique variance in forgiveness. Compared to husbands, wives' responsibility attributions were more predictive of forgiveness, whereas empathy was a better predictor of forgiveness in husbands than in wives. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the burgeoning therapeutic literature on forgiveness.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and poor general health reported by female victims of intimate partner stalking (IPS) and victims' forgiveness or lack of forgiveness towards their perpetrators, controlling for escalation of stalking, age of victims and dispositional forgiveness.


Design/methodology/approach
A total of 120 Italian female victims of IPS, who had obtained an administrative protective order (PO) issued by police in stalking cases (Ammonimento), took part in a retrospective study that examined the relationship between the presence or absence of victims' forgiveness of perpetrators and victims' PTSD symptoms and general well-being. Interviews took place after one, two or three years following the PO.


Findings
All participants reported some level of direct or indirect stalking, and up to 98 per cent had suffered both. In half of all cases, a PO had been breached within a year of its issuance. Positive forgiveness was not associated with lower PTSD symptoms and was marginally associated with well-being. Negative forgiveness (e.g. holding a grudge, desiring revenge) was associated with greater PTSD symptoms; holding a grudge was significantly associated with poorer general health.


Research limitations/implications
Victims of IPS experience a state of fear and anxiety due to the constant risk of being attacked, followed and controlled. Compared to studies about the protective role of forgiveness in community couples, this study found that among couples where stalking is present not only positive forgiveness does not take place at the same rate, but it is also not associated with the increased well-being. On the contrary, lack of forgiveness by stalked victims was related to PTSD symptoms and poorer health. Harbouring negative feelings, such a desire for revenge and holding a grudge towards a perpetrator, worsened woman's mental health. These findings are novel and may assist the criminal justice system, law enforcement and service providers in their efforts to help women who are victims of IPS.


Originality/value
This study addresses the relationship between forgiveness and lack of forgiveness among victims of IPS and PTSD symptoms and victims' poor health. Although longitudinal studies are needed to establish any causal relationship between stalking and mental health and the possibly mediating effects of forgiveness, this study is a first contribution to this important field of inquiry.

AbstractNo previous studies have analyzed values as qualities of relational microsystems, such as the romantic couple. Based on Schwartz's Theory of Human Values, this study examines the psychometric properties of the Portrait Couple Values Questionnaire (PCVQ). It measures four couple value dimensions: conservation, openness to change, self‐enhancement, and self‐transcendence. Five hundred and forty‐six Italian respondents (54.1% women), aged 41.52 years (SD = 7.19; range 23–63) and having a couple relationship, have filled in an anonymous online questionnaire. The results show the good psychometric properties of the PCVQ. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis Magnifying Glass Strategy shows good indexes of fit for each value dimension, except for the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) for openness to change, thus confirming that the PCVQ measures the four values with satisfactory internal consistency. The Multidimensional Scaling results, by showing a Stress‐1 index of 0.07, confirm the circular structure of values because the four value dimensions are in the position predicted by Schwartz's model. Participants' personal and couple values are highly but not perfectly correlated, suggesting that couple values are a related but distinct construct compared to personal values. This study's contribution lies in introducing an innovative construct into the literature on values and couples, proposing a scale to assess it.

In this prospective study, we tested a structural model in which adolescents' perceived self‐efficacy to manage parental relationships affected their satisfaction with family life both directly, and indirectly, through its impact on family practices. Findings based on 380 Italian adolescents showed that perceived filial self‐efficacy was linked directly and indirectly to satisfaction with family life, and that these relations held both concurrently and longitudinally. In particular, the greater adolescents perceived their self‐efficacy, the more they reported open communication with their parents, the more accepting they were of their parents' monitoring of their own activities outside the home and the less inclined they were to get into escalative discord over disagreements. Regardless of whether perceived filial self‐efficacy was placed in the conceptual structure as a contributor to the quality of family interactions or as a partial product of family functioning, it consistently predicted satisfaction with family life.

The present study tested the hypothesis that perceived self-efficacy to resist peer pressure for high-risk activities is related to transgressive conduct, both directly and through the mediation of open familial communication. Adolescents rated their self-regulatory efficacy, openness of communication with parents, and their involvement in delinquent conduct and substance abuse. Results of structural equation modeling confirmed that a high sense of efficacy to ward off negative peer influences was accompanied by open communication with parents about activities outside the home and by low engagement in delinquent conduct and substance abuse. Both the posited direct and mediated paths of influences were replicated for males and females, although girls exhibited a slightly weaker direct relationship between self-regulatory efficacy and transgressive conduct. The combined influence of self-regulatory efficacy and supportive parental communication and monitoring accounted for a substantial share of the variance in delinquent conduct and substance abuse. A test of an alternative causal model, that engagement in transgressive activities undermines self-regulatory efficacy and familial communication and monitoring practices, provided a poor fit to the data.

AbstractAlthough studies have highlighted the role played by couple and parental relationships for children's psychosocial adjustment, especially in challenging situations, research on these two relationship domains has largely developed separately and mostly focussed on negative couple processes. However, Family Systems Theory highlights how these subsystems are interconnected, and studies inspired by this theoretical framework provide evidence of how the quality of the interparental relationship predicts the parent–child relationship. This study focussed on the association between two relational resources (dyadic coping and parent–child relationship quality) and children's emotional difficulties during the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic in Italy. Five hundred ninety‐one Italian parents filled in an online self‐report questionnaire. A path analysis model was estimated to test the mediating role of parent–child relationship quality in the association between partner positive dyadic coping and children's emotional difficulties. The findings showed both a direct effect and an indirect effect of partner positive dyadic coping on children's emotional difficulties, because parent–child relationship quality partially mediated this association. Enhancing parents' ability to cope together with stress and the quality of the parent–child relationship might contribute to decrease children's vulnerability to emotional difficulties in challenging times.