Relations among Memories of Parental Acceptance-Rejection, Psychological (Mal)Adjustment, Forgiveness, and Vengeance among Iranian Adults

Abstract

The study investigated relations among adults’ memories of parental acceptance-rejection in childhood and adults’ current dispositions toward forgiveness and vengeance, as mediated by psychological (mal)adjustment. Data were collected from 258 adults (female = 183, Age range = 17–47 years; M_age = 39; SD = 11.4). Measures used were the short forms of the maternal and paternal Adult Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaires (PARQ), the short form of the Adult Personality Assessment Questionnaire (PAQ), the Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS), the Vengeance Scale (VS-10), and a Personal Information Form (PIF). Results showed that maternal and paternal rejection was positively associated with psychological maladjustment and negatively correlated with forgiveness for both men and women. Moreover, psychological maladjustment showed a negative relation with forgiveness and a positive relation with vengeance. Findings revealed that parental (maternal and paternal) rejection was not significantly associated with vengeance for men. However, maternal (not paternal) rejection was significantly associated with a vengeance for women. Path analysis revealed a significant indirect effect of maternal and paternal rejection on forgiveness and vengeance through psychological maladjustment. Results found no significant gender differences in the path analyses. Findings are discussed considering the Iranian culture and religious beliefs. Implications of the results and future research directions are discussed.

Keywords:

• Forgiveness
• vengeance
• psychological (mal)adjustment
• parental acceptance-rejection
• Iran

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Samira Taghikhani

Samira Taghikhani is a Master’s student in the Family Research Institute at Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. Her research interests are interpersonal acceptance-rejection, mentalization, and attachment studies.

Azin Nateghian

Azin Nateghian, Family Clinical Psychology, Shahid Beheshti University. Azin is a parent-child psychotherapist. Her areas of research are parent-child relationships, attachment, and parent-child mentalization based therapeutic approaches.

Hossein Karsazi

Hossein Karsazi, Health Psychology, University of Tehran. His areas of research are cognitive health and the influence of life experiences on cognitive aging.

Saeed Ghanbari

Saeed Ghanbari, is an assistant professor in Educational Sciences and Psychology at Shahid Beheshti University. His research interests are mentalization and attachment theory.

Parisa Sadat Seyed Mousavi

Parisa Sadat Seyed Mousavi, is an assistant professor in Family Research Institute, Shahid Beheshti University. Her research interests are interpersonal relationships based on attachment and mentalization theory. Parisa has been working on interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory for the past 12 years.