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Pivetti et al. (2021a; 2021b) examined links between COVID-related conspiracy beliefs and acceptance of vaccinations in Italy and Finland in 2020. They found that moral purity negatively predicted confidence in science, whereas political orientation predicted COVID-related conspiracy beliefs. Confidence in science, general conspiracy beliefs, and COVID-related conspiracy beliefs were found to negatively predict support for governmental restrictions and attitudes towards vaccines, and positively predict perceptions of informational contamination. Finally, attitudes towards vaccines in general strongly predicted attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine. The current research seeks to replicate these findings conceptually on a predominately Muslim sample (N = 570, M age = 26.69, 69.8% females) in Turkey in 2021, when the COVID vaccines were widely available. Measures of religiosity and left, center, and right political orientations were added to the original instrument. Hypothesized serial mediational models were tested using structural equation modelling. Results revealed that left and center political orientations positively predicted COVID-related conspiracy beliefs and confidence in science. Religiosity was negatively related to confidence in science. Confidence in science and COVID-related conspiracy beliefs predicted general attitudes toward vaccines. Conspiracy beliefs predicted COVID-related conspiracy beliefs, which in turn negatively predicted support for government restrictions and positively predicted distrust in mainstream media. Attitudes towards vaccines were strongly and positively related to attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines. [This paper was added to the Special Issue on “Conspiracy Theories about Infectious Diseases” in a post-hoc manner. Online publishing allows the addition of new papers to a published special issue, thereby permitting a special issue to grow.]

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.

During the coronavirus pandemic, this study aimed to investigate the impact of conspiracy beliefs on Finnish attitudes toward vaccinations in general and COVID-19 vaccinations in particular. This study was a conceptual replication in Finland of a study by Pivetti et al. (2021) . Some 529 Finnish participants responded to a self-report questionnaire during the partial lockdown in Finland in spring 2020. The hypothesized relationships between variables of interest were integrated in a serial multiple mediation model via structural equation modelling. Results showed that endorsing general conspiracy beliefs directly predicted (1) general attitudes toward vaccines and (2) COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs, and indirectly predicted (3) attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines via the serial mediation of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and general attitudes toward vaccines. As for the antecedents of beliefs in conspiracy theories, political orientation and moral purity predicted beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Trust in science was inversely related to general conspiracy beliefs. As for the consequences of conspiracy beliefs, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs directly predicted support for governmental restrictions (negatively) and the perception of informational contamination (positively).

In close relationships partners tend to be, simultaneously or alternatively, perpetrators and victims of transgressions. Yet forgiveness has been examined primarily from the perspective of the victim and no research has investigated experienced inequity between receiving and giving forgiveness. Informed by equity and esteem enhancement theories, the present study investigated whether an imbalance between granting and receiving forgiveness in marriage affects subsequent psychological and relational well-being. Among married couples (n = 129), spouses agreed that husbands tended to be underbenefited and wives overbenefited in regard to marital forgiveness. For wives inequity in marital forgiveness predicted a decrease in personal and relational subjective well-being over a 6-month period. Interestingly, the prediction was significant even when controlling for underbenefited versus overbenefited status. Inequity predicted cross-partner well-being only indirectly through one's own well-being.

Objective. Drawing on prior social psychological and marital research this study tested a model of forgiveness in parent - adolescent relationships. Design. 164 adolescents from 2-parent families in north Italy (67 boys and 97 girls) reported on the positive affect experienced toward each parent and completed a relationship events questionnaire that included transgressions by each parent. Results. Support was obtained for a model in which the quality of the parent - adolescent relationship predicted benign attributions for negative parent behavior, which in turn, were related to forgiving directly and indirectly through affective reactions to the behavior. Adolescent forgiving, in turn, was associated with a decreased likelihood of subsequent parent - adolescent conflict. Direct tests of gender differences showed that the model was invariant across mother - son, mother - daughter, father - son, and father - daughter relationships. Conclusions. This study is the first to show that social-cognitive variable...