The mediating role of forgiveness in the relationship between emotion regulation difficulty and relational aggression in high school students: Mixed method study

This study aimed to test the hypothetical model of the mediation roles of forgiveness on the relationship between emotion regulation difficulty and relational aggression of adolescents. In addition, it is also aimed to determine the views of adolescents on relational aggression in order to obtain in-depth information about the mediation model. In the research, quantitative and qualitative research methods were used within the framework of explanatory sequential mixed method. In the quantitative part of the study, data were collected from 1012 high school students. The qualitative stage was carried out with 15 participants who participated in the quantitative stage and volunteered for qualitative research. The quantitative data were analyzed via basic mediation modeling whereas the qualitative data were analyzed via the descriptive analysis. According to the results of the research, it was concluded that forgiveness and the sub-dimensions of forgiveness, which are the components of forgiveness, empathizing, maintaining anger and revenge have a partial mediator role in the relationship between emotion regulation difficulty and relational aggression. In support of these findings, when the participants wanted to harm or hurt their friends; It has been concluded that since they have limited access to emotion regulation strategies, which are the sub-dimensions of emotion regulation difficulties, and they have difficulties in developing new behaviors in the face of negative emotions, they do not try to forgive, and thus they exhibit relational aggression behaviors towards exclusion, glossing over, isolating, and gossip. In conclusion, all these findings point out that while adolescents' having difficulty in emotion regulation is a risk factor for relational aggression, but forgiveness is a protective factor.