Study of Socio-Emotional Competencies and their relationship with Coping and Life Satisfaction in Offenders

CRESPI MELINA; MIKULIC ISABEL MARÍA

París

Congreso; 28 International Conference on Applied Psychology-ICAP; 2014

International Asociation of Applied Psychology

The aim of this study is to analyze adult offenders? socio-emotional competencies  in Argentina. It also aims to evaluate the relationship between these competencies, the coping responses implemented, and the level of life satisfaction experienced by them. The concept of socio-emotional competencies as a set of knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes are necessary to understand, express and appropriately regulate emotional phenomena and handle properly relationships (Bisquerra & Pérez, 2007). Regarding delinquency previous research indicate that social and emotional competencies have an important role in the initiation and maintenance of criminal behavior. Thus, many of the programs for the prevention of recidivism are focused on training different socio-emotional competencies such as empathy, emotion regulation, problem solving and the appropriate management of interpersonal relationships. The evidence accumulated so far shows that specific competencies are associated with active coping strategies based on reflection and problem solving while others are associated with predominantly avoidant coping. Previous studies also indicate that certain socio-emotional competencies are positively associated with the level of life satisfaction that people experience. A descriptive-correlational study is presented, 62 offenders between 18 and 45 years of age, assessed with the Inventory of Socio-emotional Competencies (ICSE-Mikulic, 2013), the Coping Responses Inventory (CRI - Moos, 1994, Adaptation Mikulic, 1998), and the Scale of Life Satisfaction (Pavot y Diener, 1993; Adaptation Mikulic, Cassullo & Crespi, 2009). The results show correspondence with previous research in this area, revealing a low level of socio-emotional competencies in many of the participants, and significant associations with avoidant coping responses and low levels of life satisfaction. Based on these results, we discuss the important role that socio-emotional competencies have in programs for prevention and treatment of delinquency in Buenos Aires, Argentina.