Person-Centered Messages, Attributions of Responsibility, and the Willingness to Forgive Parental Infidelity

Abstract

This study tested the degree to which person-centered disclosures about parental infidelity are associated with adult children’s attributions of responsibility for infidelity and willingness to forgive the offending parent. Participants included 299 adult children (aged 18–30) who were randomly assigned to hypothetical scenarios manipulating the person-centeredness of the offended parent’s disclosure and the biological sex of the offending parent. Although person-centered disclosures did not predict willingness to forgive, children’s attributions of responsibility for the offense did inversely predict their willingness to forgive. Meaningful differences in attributions of responsibility and willingness to forgive emerged on the basis of the sex of the offending parent. The results support attribution theory by showing that part of understanding third-party relational transgressions involves assessments of responsibility.

Keywords:

• Parental Infidelity
• Person-Centeredness
• Attributions
• Forgiveness
• Transgressions

Notes

1. One reviewer expressed concerns about our unidimensional adaptation of the TRIM measure given its original, three-dimensional factor structure. The TRIM includes three dimensions assessing the degree to which the victim of a relational transgression avoids the offending partner, has thoughts of revenge toward the offending partner, and/or forgives the offending partner. In our study, however, we adapted items from the measure to assess a third party’s (i.e., an adult child’s) willingness to forgive an unfaithful parent based on the faithful parent’s disclosure. We re-analyzed our data by using the tripartite factor structure reported in McCullough et al. (2006) and found no differences in the pattern of results. Thus, when coupled with the changes we made to create a measure of willingness to forgive, as well as our desire to present the most parsimonious set of findings, we retained and analyzed composite scores for our dependent variable, a decision supported by interitem correlations and the high internal reliability of the scale.

2. Although the results for H1 were statistically nonsignificant, according to Hayes (2013), “Mediation analysis as practiced in the 21st century no longer imposes evidence of simple association between X and Y as a precondition” (p. 88). Consequently, we proceeded to test H4 and H5 as planned.

3. Given that our post hoc analyses were exploratory in nature, we included those participants who indicated they were “unsure” of whether or not either of their parents had committed an act of infidelity so as to double our sample size and statistical power in the factorial ANCOVA.