Il ruolo dei processi di attribuzione e del sessismo sull’intenzione di perdonare un episodio di violenza da parte del partner.

[Autom. eng. transl.] Violence by a man towards his partner (IPVAW) is the most common form of violence against women (Haise, 2011). The recidivism rate of this crime is very high and varies between 30 and 70% (Dutton, 1995a, 1995d). Many women, victims of domestic violence, forgive their partner several times before being able to permanently end the relationship. A recent body of research has reported that partner's forgiveness increases the likelihood of reconciliation (Gordon, Burton, Porter, 2004) and increases the risk of suffering the same levels of violence in subsequent years (McNulty, 2011, 2016). We therefore wanted to investigate some relational and social variables that could increase the intention to forgive the partner, following an episode of aggression towards his partner. In fact, the reasons that push a young woman to forgive her partner, following an episode of psychological and / or physical violence, could be different from those concerning women who have been implicated in an abusive relationship for many years. The overall goal of the study was to analyze the behavioral intentions of young women following a hypothetical episode of partner violence. The specific objectives were to analyze whether, and to what extent, the type of violence was associated with the intention to forgive the partner, checking the woman's attributions and perceptions of aggression and levels of sexism. An experimental study was conducted - between subjects - by administering 171 university students one of the two scenarios of violence envisaged (psychological and physical), then asking to answer a series of questions. Analysis of the results showed that psychological violence was forgiven significantly more than physical violence and that the relationship between typology and forgiveness was partially mediated by the perception of the severity of the aggression and by the attributions of responsibility for the episode. Finally, it emerged that, consistent with our hypotheses, women who reported higher levels of benevolent sexism were more motivated to forgive their partner. The main limit of the study was the choice of the hypothetical scenario, which however allowed us to analyze the behavioral intentions of the young students, net of any levels of investment in the relationship. In fact, we wanted to analyze what increased the risk of forgiving an episode of violence within the relationship, from a preventive perspective. Future studies should examine the impact of perceptions, attributions and levels of sexism, on partner forgiveness, in samples of young women with actual experiences of violence, checking the duration of the relationship and the type of violence suffered.