Francesca Giorgia Paleari

Self-Forgiveness in Romantic Relationships: It Matters to Both of Us

This study investigates self-forgiveness for real hurts committed against the partner in a romantic relationship (N = 168 couples). Using a dyadic perspective, we evaluated whether offender self-forgiveness, conceived as a bidimensional construct distinct from self-excusing, was uniquely related to both own and partner relationship satisfaction. For both males and females, offending partners were more satisfied with their romantic relationship to the extent that they had more positive and less negative sentiment and thoughts toward themselves, whereas victimized partners were more satisfied with the relationship when the offending partner had less negative sentiment and thoughts (but not more positive ones) toward himself/herself. The implications of these findings for understanding self-forgiveness and its pro-relationship effects in romantic couples are discussed.

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.

The reciprocal relationship between husbands and wives’ marital forgivingness: a two-wave cross-lagged latent difference score analysis of ten-year data

Cross-lagged latent difference score (LDS) models complement cross-lagged regression models, but are better suited to detecting differences in intrapersonal change and examining the relation between changes in different variables across time. In this article we present cross-lagged LDS models as a method for conceptualizing and measuring change in two-wave dyadic data. The statistical analysis of these models is illustrated using data on marital forgivingness collected from 61 couples at two time points separated by a 10-year interval. The results support the view that cross-lagged LDS models can be an appropriate means to analyze within-person change over two occasions in the context of nonindependent couple data. This is true even when sample size prohibits the estimation of cross-lagged LDS models through common factors using multiple indicators. Conditions that increase model reliability in the absence of multiple indicators are described.