Social Networks and Forgiveness: The Role of Trust and Efficacy

We examine the link between social network size and forgiveness, as well as mediating effects of self-efficacy and trust. Data are from the Detroit Community Study, which include three racial/ethnic groups: African Americans, Arab Americans, and White Americans (N=907). Results indicated that larger network size is associated with more forgiveness, but is mediated by trust. Patterns varied within racial/ethnic group: among Arab Americans self-efficacy mediated the effect of network size on forgiveness; among African Americans there were no direct or mediating effects; among White Americans an indirect effect of trust on forgiveness was identified. Findings suggest complex associations with forgiveness.     

Introduction

This special issue focuses on contextual factors that contribute to cognitive aging, as they have important implications for prevention and intervention strategies to reduce the global burden of age-related cognitive impairment. Context is defined broadly in terms of geographic residence, socioeconomic conditions, social network characteristics, and the spousal/partner relationship. Each of these lifetime contextual factors has been linked to variability in cognitive development, and the included papers advance this extant literature by examining how these lifespan contexts interact with person-level characteristics in the largest, nationally representative study of aging in the United States (U.S.), the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).     

Race/Ethnic Differences in Social Resources as Cognitive Risk and Protective Factors

Overall social network size, often the sum of common lifetime relationships, including children, family, and friends, has been linked to cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s Disease. However, little research has examined the association between network size composition and cognitive function in middle-aged and older adults in the context of race/ethnicity. We investigated the associations between the number of close children, family, and friends independently with executive function (EF) and memory across a subsample of non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White participants who completed the Health and Retirement Study Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (N = 2,395). We found that network size composition was more closely linked to EF than memory and that these associations varied by race/ethnicity. Specifically, the strongest associations existed between EF and quadratic estimates of the number of close children of non-Hispanic Black participants, and number of close family members for Hispanic participants. Among Black participants, a curvilinear relationship indicated that two close children were associated with greater EF, while a smaller or larger number of close children were associated with lower EF. On the other hand, among Hispanic participants, higher EF was associated with fewer (0–1) and greater (4-5+) numbers of family member contacts. Overall, these results indicate that examining children, family, and friends independently may be more useful than the common practice of aggregation of overall network size, especially in the context of race/ethnicity.