Hurtful Events Research Articles

“The Truth Hurts But Silence Kills”: Restitutio ad Integrum and Scriptotherapy in Mario d’Offizi’s Autobiography Bless Me Father

Bless Me Father, the autobiography of South African-Italian poet Mario d’Offizi, enriches the spectrum of masculinities presented in South African white male poets’ autobiographies. It narrates the story of a “marginal” white man growing up under apartheid, and provides an innovative testimony within the rich autobiographical tradition of South Africa. The focus in this article is placed on traumatic episodes in the author’s past and on the relationship with a predatory father figure. The conflict between the choice to remain silent about hurtful events and the desire to expose them is the central dialectic of psychological trauma, and scriptotherapy is the medium used by d’Offizi to grapple with his haunting past and seek healing. Bless Me Father, this article argues, is a story of pain, loss, survival, and triumph over adversities that occupies a distinctive space within post-apartheid South African literature.

Exploration of Embitterment among University Students: A Qualitative Study

Positive and negative feelings are felt by all of us in our lives. When an individual goes through an unjust, personal humiliating or hurtful event which results in psychological stress and even strong urge for revenge, the individual is suffering from embitterment (Linden, 2003). Students play vital role in make or break of any society. It is essential to address the emotional disturbances they might have. Current study explores the phenomenon of Embitterment in university students. Data was collected from students using Semi structured interviews. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis. Assessment of happenings in life of students, negative impacts of bad happenings and unfairness, positive and negative reactions to unfair behavior and ways to overcome it are discussed. It was concluded that if events in students’ life are looked into carefully then possible reactions can be identified. This way it leads to have more control on embittered mind and solutions can be found. This study will contribute in helping students for friendly atmosphere to grow academically and have a better life in general.

Social Class and Social Pain: Target SES Biases Judgments of Pain and Support for White Target Individuals.

Social pain, defined as distress caused by negative interpersonal experiences (e.g., ostracism, mistreatment), is detrimental to health. Yet, it is unclear how social class might shape judgments of the social pains of low-socioeconomic status (SES) and high-SES individuals. Five studies tested competing toughness and empathy predictions for SES's effect on social pain judgments. Consistent with an empathy account, in all studies (Ncumulative = 1,046), low-SES White targets were judged more sensitive to social pain than high-SES White targets. Further, empathy mediated these effects, such that participants felt greater empathy and expected more social pain for low-SES targets relative to high-SES targets. Social pain judgments also informed judgments of social support needs, as low-SES targets were presumed to need more coping resources to manage hurtful events than high-SES targets. The current findings provide initial evidence that empathic concern for low-SES White individuals sensitizes social pain judgments and increases expected support needs for lower class White individuals.

Eventos hirientes, amor compasivo y calidad de vida en parejas con cardiopatía

Debido a que la relación de pareja es un vínculo significativo, es comprensible que cuando uno de los miembros padece una enfermedad cardiaca, entren en juego variables positivas y negativas, como los eventos hirientes (EH) y el amor compasivo; los cuales impactan la calidad de vida de la pareja. Por ello, los objetivos fueron: 1) Explorar diferencias en la calidad de vida entre personas con cardiopatía y sus parejas, 2) Examinar diferencias en la experiencia de EH, el amor compasivo y la calidad de vida en función del sexo, y 3) Analizar la relación de la experiencia de EH y el amor compasivo con la calidad de vida. Se trabajó con 204 parejas mexicanas de 18 a 88 años, de los cuales 216 (105 mujeres, 111 hombres) padecían alguna cardiopatía. La batería estuvo conformada por: 1) Escala de Estado de Salud Mental y Física SF-36, 2) Escala de Amor Compasivo y 3) Batería de Eventos Hirientes. Para ello se realizaron pruebas U de Mann-Whitney y análisis de correlación de Spearman. Los resultados muestran diferencias entre la pareja respecto a la salud, mientras que las mujeres indican mayores afectaciones a partir de un EH, así como mayores limitaciones físicas debido a problemas emocionales y de salud. Finalmente, los hallazgos confirman la relación de los EH y el amor compasivo con la calidad de vida, con mayores afectaciones en los pacientes. Estos resultados fueron discutidos según la teoría en donde resalta la interacción de las variables trabajadas en parejas con una enfermedad crónica.

Adult Attachment and Conflict Behavior: Delineating the Links

In couple relationships, intense or protracted conflict can activate the attachment system, raising concerns about the partner‘s availability and the future of the relationship. Hence, individuals with different attachment orientations are expected to respond differently to conflict. This article summarises a series of studies into adult attachment and conflict processes, examining four issues: conflicts regarding closeness and distance in dating couples, patterns of marital conflict, reactions to anger-evoking and hurtful events, and the role of attachment and conflict patterns in the intergenerational transmission of relationship difficulties. The studies point to complex links between attachment and conflict variables. Insecurity - particularly attachment anxiety – is associated with high levels of conflict, and with maladaptive responses such as coercion and conflict avoidance. These conflict behaviors are likely to fuel disagreement, hence maintaining or exacerbating insecurity. There is also evidence that insecurity and maladaptive conflict behaviors create relational dissatisfaction, and that conflict behaviors partially mediate the link between insecurity and dissatisfaction. Research further suggests that parents‘ insecurity and destructive conflict behaviors have negative consequences for adolescent offspring, in terms of attachment difficulties and appraisals of loneliness. These findings highlight the importance of interventions designed to ameliorate insecurities and communication difficulties.

Transgressor Communication After Committing a Hurtful Relational Event: Associations With Attributed Intent, Blame, Guilt, Responsibility, and Perceived Forgiveness

Following a hurtful relational event, transgressor communication with the victim impacts relational repair and forgiveness. Based in an attribution framework, this study examined how transgressors’ (N = 504) self-attributed responsibility, intent, blame, and guilt regarding a hurtful event associated with their communicative response (e.g., apology, avoidance, justification), and how their communication associated with perceived forgiveness. In regression analyses, attribution dimensions predicted five communicative strategies. The attribution model accounted for 35% of variance in transgressors’ reported use of apology/concession strategies. Use of apology/concession and appeasement/positivity positively associated, and avoidance/silence negatively associated, with perception of forgiveness.

The experience of anger and sadness in response to hurtful behavior: Effects of gender-pairing and national culture

We report a study of recalled experiences of anger and sadness following hurtful events, focusing on the differentiated effects of cognitive appraisals, culture, and gender of perpetrator and subject. Results from a sample of 321 participants recruited in Hong Kong and the United States show that emotional experiences in response to hurt differ cross-nationally. We found that participants’ reports of hurtful experiences were related to their experience of anger and sadness, with anger responses proportional to the perception of perpetrator responsibility for the hurt. Compared to Hong Kong participants, Americans reported experiencing more anger, whereas Hong Kong participants’ experience of anger was ameliorated by familiarity with the perpetrator. The results for gender pair effects showed that male participants reported their experience of anger following a hurtful event was reduced when the perpetrator was female, while their experience of sadness was reduced when the perpetrator was another male. We discuss the implications of our findings for emotion management in Hong Kong and the United States.

Hurt Feelings in Women: The Interaction of Social and Individual Difference Factors

Research into the causes of hurt feelings has generally examined the impact of single predictors. The current article builds on previous literature by examining the interactive effects of several key elements of hurtful events in predicting the intensity of hurt. Two studies using community samples of women examined interactions between the type of hurtful event, the importance of the perpetrator, and victim hurt-proneness in predicting variance in hurt intensity. Study 1 (n= 475) used a series of scenarios as the hurtful stimulus while Study 2 (n= 380) used a number of recalled hurtful events. Both studies replicated previous bivariate relationships between perpetrator importance and hurt-proneness and the intensity of hurt, while the first study also demonstrated a significant effect for type of hurtful event. Both studies also found a significant three-way interaction between these variables, indicating that victim hurt-proneness only predicted the intensity of hurt at lower levels of event severity and perpetrator importance. It is concluded that the experience of hurt is multidimensional and contextual. Future directions for research involving gender differences and interventions for individuals and couples are discussed.

The conceptualisation of forgiveness among Turkish children and adolescents.

This study examined (a) how Turkish children and adolescents define forgiveness, (b) the association between self-reported forgiveness and the concepts participants hold and (c) the association between self-reported forgiveness and age. Three hundred and sixty-seven Turkish children in primary (N = 220) and secondary schools (N = 147) were involved in the study. Participants were asked to define forgiveness, and the study used the Enright Forgiveness Inventory for Children (EFI-C). Participants' conceptions of forgiveness were categorised into four groups: conditional forgiveness, reconciliation, ignoring the hurtful event and affective reactions. Half of all the participants in the study were found to be in the conditional forgiveness category. Turkish children were found to be mostly in the category of conditional forgiveness, reconciliation and affective reactions compared with adolescents. Adolescents were mainly found to be in the ignoring the hurtful event category. The highest self-reported forgiveness mean was in the affective reactions category. Participants were commonly offended by friends, siblings, teachers and fathers. No correlation was found between self-reported forgiveness and age. The present results expand the literature of forgiveness by presenting evidence that Turkish children's and adolescents' understanding of forgiveness moderately relates to theoretical definitions.

The Aftermath of Hurtful Events: Cognitive, Communicative, and Relational Outcomes

This study explored cognitive, communicative, and relational outcomes associated with hurtful events in romantic relationships. Participants (N = 206) completed two surveys, two months apart, to examine uncertainty as a mediator between hurt and rumination and hurt and forgiveness, communication differences based on hurtful event type, and post-hurtful event relational changes. Fourteen types of hurtful events emerged, with infidelity (n = 47) and jealousy (n = 27) occurring most frequently. Self-uncertainty mediated the relationships between hurt and rumination, nonverbal forgiveness, and forgiveness through minimization.

The dark side of social networking sites: An exploration of the relational and psychological stressors associated with Facebook use and affordances

Research on social media typically focuses on its benefits; considerably less is known about the dark side of social networking sites. Focus groups of adult Facebook users (N=44) uncovered narratives surrounding individuals’ negative psychological and relational experiences tied to the social networking site and its affordances (e.g., connectivity, visibility, accessibility, persistence, and social feedback). Thematic analysis rendered five themes regarding Facebook stressors: managing inappropriate or annoying content, being tethered, lack of privacy and control, social comparison and jealousy, and relationship tension and conflict. Results demonstrate that although Facebook users often experience negative emotions, they feel pressured to access the site frequently due to the fear of missing out and to keep up with relationship maintenance demands. Some participants reported privacy violations due to Facebook’s visibility, connectivity, and persistence. These features also afforded constant social comparison to other network members, which triggered jealousy, anxiety, and other negative emotions. Relational turbulence occurred due to the public nature of conflict on Facebook. Many participants’ responses revealed overarching contradictions: initially they claimed Facebook was inconsequential, yet later recounted significant stressful or hurtful events associated with Facebook. Our findings indicate some methods may not uncover the actual nature or scope of users’ experiences.

Hurtful Episodes in Parent–Adolescent Relationships: How Accounts and Attributions Contribute to the Difficulty of Talking about Hurt

This research examines sense-making about hurtful episodes between parents and adolescents and how sense-making processes relate to subsequent communication. Results highlight differences in the events parents and adolescents find hurtful and the complex forces that influence accounts for hurtful episodes. Children were less affected overall by hurtful episodes and provided more benevolent accounts of parents' hurtful actions and words. Parents demonstrated typical victim–perpetrator biases, particularly when relationship quality was low. Furthermore, findings provided evidence that sense-making about hurtful events may affect follow-up conversations. Intentionality attributions and the similarity of pre-interaction accounts predicted the difficulty and negativity of subsequent conversations, based on both perceived and observed ratings. Account similarity also predicted observed aspects of joint storytelling in the conversations.

Apologies, Expectations, and Violations: An Analysis of Confirmed and Disconfirmed Expectations for Responses to Apologies

After hurting someone, individuals will sometimes apologize. Research has not explored the degree to which individuals expect their apologies to be accepted and the reactions individuals have when apologies are not accepted. The researchers use Expectancy Violation Theory to understand the relationship between expectations, responses to apologies. The researchers gathered data on hurtful events using critical event questionnaires, and results indicated that while accepting an apology is positively evaluated by apologizers, this relationship is moderated by their expectations of acceptance prior to the actual response to the apology. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Contextualizing Experiences of Hurt Within Close Relationships

This article uses Bradbury and Fincham's contextual model of relationships to clarify how proximal and distal factors affect the relationship damage associated with hurtful messages, how the consequences of a previous hurt shape people's experience of a subsequent hurtful message, and how the cumulative consequences of hurt influence relationship quality over two weeks. Participants responded about either a dating partner or friend. Multi-level modeling and regression analyses revealed that relational quality and perceptions of messages corresponded with relational damage, and the number of hurtful events and relational damage interacted to predict relational quality at the end of the study.

Adolescents’ moral evaluations and ratings of cyberbullying: The effect of veracity and intentionality behind the event

The constant exposure to electronic media has increased the likelihood of adolescents experiencing hurtful events such as cyberbullying. The current study examined how adolescents’ moral evaluations of cyberbullying are affected by different aspects of the event including falsity of posts, power imbalance and intention to harm. Adolescents between 12–13years of age (n=77) and 15–16years of age (n=77) read moral vignettes and were asked to evaluate the actions of the protagonist. They were also asked if the behaviour in the vignette was an incident of cyberbullying. Participants also filled out a questionnaire about their own experiences with cyberbullying. It was found that adolescents evaluated as more negative those situations depicting false stories, imbalance of power, and intention to harm; Younger children had difficulties recognizing the intentions behind on-line posts. Adolescents who have cyber-intimidated others were less severe in their evaluations and less likely to rate vignettes as cyberbullying compared to other youth.

Relational Communication and Understanding in Conversations About Hurtful Events Between Parents and Adolescents

This article examines how the severity of a hurtful event and discrepancies in perceptions of relational communication affect perceived understanding and empathic accuracy (EA) in parent–adolescent discussions about a hurtful event in their relationship. Results from a dyadic interaction study showed that the severity of the hurtful event was negatively associated with perceived understanding. Furthermore, discrepancies in perceptions of disaffiliation behaviors during a conversation about a child's hurtful event were also negatively associated with perceived understanding. Discrepancy in perceptions of adolescent's dominance corresponded negatively with parents' perceived understanding when discussing the child's hurtful event. There were no significant associations with EA. The implications for work on hurtful events, understanding, and relational framing theory are discussed.

How the brain heals emotional wounds: the functional neuroanatomy of forgiveness

In life, everyone goes through hurtful events caused by significant others: a deceiving friend, a betraying partner, or an unjustly blaming parent. In response to painful emotions, individuals may react with anger, hostility, and the desire for revenge. As an alternative, they may decide to forgive the wrongdoer and relinquish resentment. In the present study, we examined the brain correlates of forgiveness using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Healthy participants were induced to imagine social scenarios that described emotionally hurtful events followed by the indication to either forgive the imagined offenders, or harbor a grudge toward them. Subjects rated their imaginative skills, levels of anger, frustration, and/or relief when imagining negative events as well as following forgiveness. Forgiveness was associated with positive emotional states as compared to unforgiveness. Granting forgiveness was associated with activations in a brain network involved in theory of mind, empathy, and the regulation of affect through cognition, which comprised the precuneus, right inferior parietal regions, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results uncovered the neuronal basis of reappraisal-driven forgiveness, and extend extant data on emotional regulation to the resolution of anger and resentment following negative interpersonal events.

The relation between implicit theories of personality and forgiveness

AbstractThis research examined the effect of implicit theories of personality on interpersonal forgiveness and the mediating mechanism underlying this effect. Two experiments show that incremental personality theorists are less forgiving than entity personality theorists and that this difference can be explained by the incremental theorists’ stronger tendency to appraise the transgressor as responsible for causing the hurtful event. The same findings were obtained regardless of whether forgiveness was measured by self‐report or assessed as responses to anger words in a latency response task.

The role of sincere amends and perceived partner responsiveness in forgiveness

In a sample of 188 people currently in a romantic relationship, the authors examined the extent to which perceiving a partner as responsive and sincere in making amends relates to participants' forgiveness of a partner after a real‐life hurtful event. Specifically, it was predicted that sincere amends would be associated with greater forgiveness because it conveys that one's partner has understood and validated one's experience of the hurtful event. Results supported this mediational model. Further, exploratory analyses suggested that this meditational model is moderated by event severity and relationship satisfaction. Discussion focuses on understanding how this work might help to inform the dynamic process of forgiveness in couples.

Proposed necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal psychotherapeutic change

The original concepts of psychological hurt and therapeutic catharsis are proposed as possible necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal psychotherapeutic change. The basic meaning of psychological hurt is any nonorganic, residual interference with psychological functioning that resulted from an event the person experienced. The irreducible source of such interference is a registration in the brain of sensory input from hurtful events, which when sufficiently activated is manifested in affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological symptomatology. Accordingly, unresolved psychological hurt is considered as the most productive target for intervention. Therapeutic catharsis, a fundamental reconceptualization of how catharsis has been traditionally understood, is the process by which the nervous system heals itself of residual interference. Therapeutic catharsis is assumed, therefore, to have the most potential for resolving psychological hurt. Optimal therapeutic change occurs when unresolved psychological hurt is resolved through a therapeutic cathartic release.