The Effects of Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Self-Control on Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Bullying

Abstract

The social cognitive approach to moral development posits that moral self-schemas encourage character strengths and reduce adolescents’ aggression. However, limited research has examined the influence of positive personal characteristics on proactive behaviors and reactive aggression in bullying. This study examined direct and mediational relationships between forgiveness, gratitude, self-control, and both proactive and reactive aggression in bullying. The extent to which the structural relations of this model were invariant by gender and stage of adolescence were also evaluated. Participants in this study were 1000 Mexican students, 500 early adolescents (M age = 12.36, SD = 0.77 years) and 500 middle adolescents (M age = 16.64, SD = 0.89 years), between 12 and 17 years old. Structural equation and multi-group invariance analysis were performed. Results indicate that gratitude and forgiveness are positively related to self-control. Gratitude, forgiveness, and self-control are also negatively related to reactive and proactive aggression. Forgiveness and gratitude had an indirect relationship by decreasing both proactive and reactive aggression through their positive effects on self-control. Additionally, gender moderated the relationships between variables proposed in the model, whereas stage of adolescence did not. Overall findings suggest that moral self-schemas and strengths explained both types of aggression in bullying.

How to become more grateful? The mediating role of resilience between empathy and gratitude

“…For example, gratitude and affective empathy that resembles abovementioned positive emotions, promote actions that benefit others even at a cost to the self (Lishner, Steinert, & Stocks, 2016). In addition, gratitude is often described as a protective factor that fosters positive functioning (e.g., proactive coping, life satisfaction, well-being, positive beliefs, creativity and altruistic behaviors), and minimizes the risk of psychopathology (e.g., reactive and proactive aggression, suicidal ideation and behaviors, depression and anxiety, traumatic symptoms) (Vernon, Dillon, & Steiner, 2009;Israel-Cohen, Florina, Kashy-Rosenbaum, & Kaplan, 2015;Van Dusen, Tiamiyu, Kashdan, & Elhai, 2015;Arnout & Almoied, 2020;García-Vázquez, Valdés-Cuervo, & Parra-Pérez, 2020).…”

Ciberacoso Y Recursos Personales en Adolescentes: Las Competencias Emocionales Y La Gratitud Como Factores De Protección Ante Las Conductas De Ciberagresión

“…Con el primer objetivo se pretendió examinar las correlaciones entre la gratitud, la IE y la ciberagresión. De acuerdo a las evidencias de la literatura previa (Cañas et al, 2019;Chen et al, 2020;García-Vázquez et al, 2020;Geng, 2018;Preś et al, 2020;Yudes et al, 2020), los resultados de este estudio mostraron correlaciones significativas entre las tres variables en las direcciones esperadas. Así, se ha observado que aquellos adolescentes con un mejor desarrollo de las competencias emocionales muestran una mayor conciencia sobre las cosas positivas que experimentan en su vida cotidiana.…”

“…Con el segundo objetivo se analizan las relaciones de ambos recursos con la ciberagresión. Considerando hallazgos previos sobre el papel protector de la IE en el ciberacoso (p.ej., Carbonell y Cerezo, 2019; Yudes et al, 2020) y de la gratitud sobre las actitudes y los comportamientos agresivos (p.ej., Chen et al, 2020;García-Vázquez et al, 2020), se espera encontrar que ambos recursos expliquen, de manera independiente, una disminución de la conducta ciberagresiva. En el tercer y último objetivo, se pretende explorar el papel moderador de la IE en la relación entre gratitud y ciberagresión.…”

“…Teniendo en cuenta que ambos recursos, individualmente, pueden explicar una reducción de los comportamientos agresivos (p.ej., Carbonell y Cerezo, 2019; Deng et al, 2019), y las evidencias de algunos estudios sobre las relaciones positivas que se establecen entre la IE y la gratitud (p.ej., Preś et al, 2020;Salve y Lavalekar, 2017), esperamos encontrar un efecto de interacción de ambos recursos en la predicción de la ciberagresión. Share Psychology, 1(4), 113-122 Aunque existen algunos estudios recientes que arrojan evidencias sobre el papel protector de la gratitud para reducir las actitudes y los comportamientos agresivos en situaciones de violencia entre iguales (Chen et al, 2020;García-Vázquez et al, 2020), en el contexto del ciberacoso, el papel de la gratitud apenas ha sido examinado.…”

Dispositional and situational moral emotions, bullying and prosocial behavior in adolescence

“…One of the traits associated with bullying is moral disengagement, which is linked to apathy or indifference to bullying-related actions, whether from a bystander or an aggressor (Bandura, 2016;de Oliveira et al, 2019). In addition, moral disengagement in bullying cases has been related to low scores in consideration of others and poor self-control (García-Vázquez et al, 2020). In this line, a longitudinal study by Thornberg et al (2019) including elementary students revealed that changes in moral disengagement altered the bullying behavior and increased the collective efficacy of the class, which stopped aggression towards other students.…”