A Comparison of Emotion Regulation Difficulties, Distress Tolerance and Affect Balance among Imprisoned Women Accused of Fraud and Ordinary Women

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Human Sciences, Islamic Azad University, Saveh Branch, Saveh, Iran

Abstract

Background: Differences among ordinary and imprisoned people are in terms of both physiologic and biologic properties and mental and social characteristics.
 
Objectives: This study aims to compare the emotion regulation difficulties, distress tolerance and affect balance between ordinary and imprisoned women accused of fraud to clarify the importance of emotion regulation and the recognition of people's excitement in improving the quality of healthy life.
 
Methods: This research is an applied work conducted by the causal-comparative method. The statistical universe of this study consists of 120 individuals including 50 imprisoned women accused of fraud in Rey Prison as well as 70 ordinary women without any criminal records that were randomized from Tehran. The research tools are as follows: Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS) and Affect Balance Scale (ABS).
 
Results: The results show a difference between the difficulties of emotion regulation, distress tolerance and affect balance of women accused of fraud and ordinary people. Our results show that women accused of fraud compared to ordinary women according to the value (t = 37.11) at a significance level of 0.01 are at a lower level in their emotional settings. Also due to the amount (t = -11.68), a higher level of distress and stress tolerance of ordinary women compared to the defendants was shown and according to the value (t = -4.83), there is a significant difference in the affectwhere female fraudsters are at a lower level versusordinary ones.
 
Conclusion: The imprisoned women should be paid specially into attention in terms of emotion regulation, distress tolerance and affect balance.

Keywords


Open Access Policy: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

1. Auolad Abdolhadi B, Foroghan M, Dadkhah A, Delavar A. The frequency of personality disorders in the women prisoners of Tehran and Karadje 2003. Soc Welfare. 2004;3(12):301-8. [Persian]
 
2. Goschke T, Bolte A. Emotional modulation of control dilemmas: the role of positive affect, reward, and dopamine in cognitive stability and flexibility. Neuropsychologia. 2014;62:403-23.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.07.015
PMid:25068705
 
3. van den Bergh B, Gatherer A, Møllera LF. Women's health in prison: urgent need for improvement in gender equity and social justice. Bull World Health Organ. 2009;87(6):406.
https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.09.066928
PMid:19565112 PMCid:PMC2686215
 
4. Ansari M. Research on women's delinquency. [Master Thesis]. Tehran: Faculty of Psychology, Allameh Tabatabaei University; 2004. [Persian]
 
5. Anestis MD, Joiner TE. Behaviorally-indexed distress tolerance and suicidality. J Psychiatr Res. 2012;46(6):703-7.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2012.02.015
PMid:22475320
 
6. Saxena P, Dubey A, Pandey R. Role of emotion regulation difficulties in predicting mental health and wellbeing. SIS J Project Psychol Ment Health. 2011;18(2):147-55.
 
7. Azami S, Makvand Hosseini S, Dokani M, Zamirinejad S. Brain cortical activity change patterns under positive and negative affective induction with consideration of extraversion and neuroticism. J North Khorasan Univ Med Sci. 2013;5(4):687-96. [Persian]
https://doi.org/10.29252/jnkums.5.4.687
 
8. Honarparvaran N, Qudery Z, Taghva M, Zandighashghaee Z. A study on irrational beliefs and emotions associated with the sexual desire of infertile women. Armaghane Danesh. 2013;17(6):514-21. [Persian]
 
9. Shams J, Azizi A, Mirzaei A. Correlation between distress tolerance and emotion regulation with students smoking dependence. Hakim Res J. 2010;13(1):11-8. [Persian]
 
10. Lagattuta KH, Elrod NM, Kramer HJ. How do thoughts, emotions, and decisions align? A new way to examine theory of mind during middle childhood and beyond. J Exp Child Psychol. 2016;149:116- 33.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2016.01.013
PMid:27017060 PMCid:PMC4907807
 
11. Martin R, Dahlen E. Cognitive emotion regulation in the prediction of depression, anxiety, stress and anger. Personal Individ Differ. 2005;39(7):1249-60.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.06.004
 
12. Tull MT, Barrett HM, McMillan ES, Roemer L. A preliminary investigation of the relationship between emotion regulation difficulties and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Behav Ther. 2007;38(3):303-13.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2006.10.001
PMid:17697854
 
13. Marzano L, Fazel S, Rivlin A, Hawton K. Psychiatric disorders in women prisoners who have engaged in near-lethal self-harm: case- control study. Br J Psychiatry. 2010;197(3):219-26.
https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.109.075424
PMid:20807968
 
14. Razavi A, Naziri G, Ghanbari R. A study on emotional intelligence of criminals based on the kind of crime and its relation to the mental health. J Cult Eng. 2012;6(57-58):59-73.
 
15. Gratz KL, Roemer L. Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: development, factor structure, and initial validation of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale. J Psychopathol Behav Assess. 2004;26(1):41-54. doi: 10.1007/s10862-008-9102-4.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-008-9102-4
 
16. Simons JS, Gaher RM. The distress tolerance scale: development and validation of a self-report measure. Motivat Emotion. 2005;29(2):83-102.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-005-7955-3
 
17. I, Praught E. On the measurement of happiness: an examination of the Bradburn Scale in the Canada Health Survey. Am J Epidemiol. 1982;116(6):949-58.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a113497
PMid:7148819
 
18. Khodabakhsh MR, Borjali A, Sohrabi F, Farrokhi NA. The role of emotion regulation difficulties as a mediator of the relationship between body image disturbance and disordered eating behavior. Int J of Pediatr. 2015;3(2.1):23-32.
 
19. Lincoln TM, Hartmann M, Köther U, Moritz S. Dealing with feeling: specific emotion regulation skills predict responses to stress in psychosis. Psychiatry Res. 2015;228(2):216-22.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2015.04.003
PMid:26001960
 
20. Rusting CL, Nolen-Hoeksema SJ. Regulating responses to anger: effects of rumination and distraction on angry mood. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1998;74(3):790-803.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.3.790
PMid:9523420
 
21. Werner-Seidler A, Banks R, Dunn BD, Moulds ML. An investigation of the relationship between positive affect regulation and depression. Behav Res Ther. 2013;51(1):46-56.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2012.11.001
PMid:23178678
 
22. Daughters SB, Reynolds EK, MacPherson L, Kahler CW, Danielson CK, Zvolensky M, et al. Distress tolerance and early adolescent externalizing and internalizing symptoms: the moderating role of gender and ethnicity. Behav Res Ther. 2009;47(3):198-205.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2008.12.001
PMid:19135649 PMCid:PMC2653593
 
23. Williams AD, Thompson J, Andrews G. The impact of psychological distress tolerance in the treatment of depression. Behav Res Ther. 2013;51(8):469-75.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2013.05.005
PMid:23787227