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

Abstract

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 ( Mage = 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.

Photovoice study of gratitude in ex-juvenile offenders

“…These teenagers feel a lot of changes in the way they perceive life and gratitude through spiritual activities in prison. It could be assumed that gratitude could lead to self-forgiveness and anger reduction that is sourced from shame emotion, which was found in a previous study among male prison inmates in Italy (Danioni, et al, 2021). This spiritual pathway to selfforgiveness then could nurture the ex-juvenile offenders to establish new and maintain existing interpersonal relationships (Datu et al, 2022).…”

“…Moreover, a previous study in New Zealand found that the strongest factors for ex-young offenders to desist after they were released from prison were adequate social support and acceptance (Bowman, 2015). Therefore, it is important for ex-juvenile offenders to continue the gratitude practice, as it could reduce psychological stress and maintain their compassion toward others (Danioni, et al , 2021; Reckart et al , 2017).…”

“…A study found that positive emotions -especially gratitude- can also motivate individuals to engage in positive behaviors that lead to self-improvement (Armenta et al , 2017). Gratitude could change a person to be better and wiser; and creates harmony between oneself and the environment/society (Emmons, 2007; Yang et al , 2018) because it could open the pathway to self-forgiveness and self-regulation (Danioni et al , 2021) and establishes new and maintains existing interpersonal relationships (Datu et al , 2022). Gratitude-based interventions have been developed and tried in China, which were successful in improving subjective well-being and lowering aggression among prisoners (Deng et al , 2019).…”