Family Resilience and Dyadic Coping during the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: Their Protective Role in Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has dramatically worsened people's psychological well-being. Our aim was to examine for the first time the concurrent and longitudinal relations of family resilience with hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and the moderating role of socio-demographics. For people having a romantic partner, we also explored whether family resilience and dyadic coping were uniquely related to well-being. One cross-sectional study (N = 325) and one 10-week follow-up study (N = 112) were carried out during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020) in Northern Italy. Adult participants completed an online questionnaire in both studies. Correlation, multivariate regression, and moderation analyses were carried out with IBM SPSS version 28 and its PROCESS macro. Significance of differences in correlation and regression coefficients was tested through Steiger's procedure, Wald test, and SUEST method. Family resilience was found to relate more strongly to eudaimonic (versus hedonic) well-being concurrently and to hedonic (versus eudaimonic) well-being longitudinally. The concurrent or longitudinal relations with hedonic well-being were generally stronger for females, part-time workers, and people undergoing multiple stressors. For people having a romantic partner, family resilience was concurrently associated with well-being independently of dyadic coping, whereas dyadic coping was longitudinally related to well-being independently of family resilience. Family resilience was found to protect, in the short term, the psychological well-being of people facing the pandemic outbreak. Its protective role mainly concerned hedonic well-being and was more pronounced for more vulnerable people. For persons having a romantic partner, however, dyadic coping seemed to have equal, if not greater, positive short-term effects.

Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Anger: Resources and Risk Factors for Italian Prison Inmates

The adjustment of prison inmates is recently becoming a social concern. In the current study we focused on the role of gratitude, interpersonal forgiveness, and anger, which have been widely addressed as likely to influence people's health and adaptive behaviors, in shaping prison inmates' psychological wellbeing and criminal attitudes. Participants were 104 male prison inmates aged between 24 and 75 (M_age = 46.63, SD = 11.38) imprisoned in Northern Italy who were asked to fill in an anonymous self-report questionnaire. Results highlighted that all dimensions considered play an important, albeit different and highly specific, role; Gratitude is a promotional factor that enhances psychological wellbeing, whereas interpersonal forgiveness appears to be a protective factor against the adoption of a criminal attitude as violence or antisocial intent. Finally, anger is a risk factor toward both psychological wellbeing and violent behaviors. Implications of these results and further developments of the study are discussed.

How culturally unique are pandemic effects? Evaluating cultural similarities and differences in effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on COVID impacts

Despite being bio-epidemiological phenomena, the causes and effects of pandemics are culturally influenced in ways that go beyond national boundaries. However, they are often studied in isolated pockets, and this fact makes it difficult to parse the unique influence of specific cultural psychologies. To help fill in this gap, the present study applies existing cultural theories via linear mixed modeling to test the influence of unique cultural factors in a multi-national sample (that moves beyond Western nations) on the effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on pandemic outcomes that include adverse financial impacts, adverse resource impacts, adverse psychological impacts, and the health impacts of COVID. Our study spanned 19 nations (participant N = 14,133) and involved translations into 9 languages. Linear mixed models revealed similarities across cultures, with both young persons and women reporting worse outcomes from COVID across the multi-national sample. However, these effects were generally qualified by culture-specific variance, and overall more evidence emerged for effects unique to each culture than effects similar across cultures. Follow-up analyses suggested this cultural variability was consistent with models of pre-existing inequalities and socioecological stressors exacerbating the effects of the pandemic. Collectively, this evidence highlights the importance of developing culturally flexible models for understanding the cross-cultural nature of pandemic psychology beyond typical WEIRD approaches.

Conspiracy beliefs and attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccinations

During the coronavirus pandemic, this study aimed to investigate the impact of conspiracy beliefs on Finnish attitudes toward vaccinations in general and COVID-19 vaccinations in particular. This study was a conceptual replication in Finland of a study by Pivetti et al. (2021) . Some 529 Finnish participants responded to a self-report questionnaire during the partial lockdown in Finland in spring 2020. The hypothesized relationships between variables of interest were integrated in a serial multiple mediation model via structural equation modelling. Results showed that endorsing general conspiracy beliefs directly predicted (1) general attitudes toward vaccines and (2) COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and indirectly predicted (3) attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines via the serial mediation of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and general attitudes toward vaccines. As for the antecedents of beliefs in conspiracy theories, political orientation and moral purity predicted beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Trust in science was inversely related to general conspiracy beliefs. As for the consequences of conspiracy beliefs, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs directly predicted support for governmental restrictions (negatively) and the perception of informational contamination (positively).

Forgiving the terrorists of the Years of Lead in Italy: The role of restorative justice beliefs and sociocognitive determinants

The period of political terrorism named the “Years of Lead” ( Anni di Piombo) started in Italy at the end of the 1960s and lasted until the late 1980s. The social wounds of this bloody time are still not healed, and there is a social debate about the opportunity to concede forgiveness to those responsible for those crimes. Drawing from the intergroup forgiveness literature, we tested a model explaining under which conditions forgiveness towards terrorists could be supported by Italian citizens. The model was tested in two generations: 331 Italian citizens who were adolescents or adults during the terrorism period and 208 Italian young adults born after the end of the Years of Lead. Findings showed that restorative justice beliefs and sociocognitive variables, like outgroup empathy and trust, were uniquely linked to forgiveness towards the terrorists.

Forgiveness and conflict resolution in close relationships: within and cross partner effects

Do forgiveness and conflict tactics (compromise, aggression, and avoidance) predict effective arguing and relationship quality? Using 92 Italian couples their own relationship quality. For both men and women, negative responses to conflict (unforgiveness, aggression, and avoidance) overlapped and jointly predicted self-reported and partner-reported relationship quality, directly and indirectly via effective arguing. Positive responses investigated (benevolence and compromise) did not overlap for either men or women. Men’s positive responses to conflict uniquely predicted self-reported and partner-reported relationship quality via effective arguing, whereas women’s positive responses did not predict them independently of the male partner’s tactics.