The emotions that intimate partners’ feel and express have a profound impact on relationship quality and stability. Emotions influence the course of an interaction, by shaping one’s behavior and therefore the course of an interaction (Niedenthal & Brauer, 2012). To respond appropriately to an interaction partner's emotional signals and needs, emotions need to be reactive to significant interpersonal experiences. Interpersonal adaptation may be compromised if individuals emotional states are little susceptible to interpersonal events and also if emotions are highly reactive, but in an unpredictable manner. To date, both dynamic patterns have been related to affect-related pathology or maladjustment (e.g., Kuppens, Allen & Sheeber, 2010; Ebner-Priemer et al., 2007), whereby the latter has even been associated with interpersonal maladjustment (Tolpin, Gunthert, Cohen & O’Neill, 2004).

81 university students recorded their emotions and their interpersonal experiences 4 times a day over the course of 1 month with an electronic ambulatory assessment procedure. Following this, a subsample took part in a laboratory interaction with their intimate partners. Using a multilevel analysis we examined how individual emotional dynamics are linked to event-related emotional responses and interpersonal adaptation. We aimed to map individual differences in emotion dynamics onto emotional responses to interpersonal events. We report about associations between interindividual differences in emotion dynamics and reactivity to interpersonal events based on our repeated measurements and our laboratory data.

Introduction: The Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKHS) is a congenital malformation characterized by aplasia or hypoplasia of the uterus and vagina that occurs in a phenotypically normal female with normal ovaries and with a normal female karyotype 46XX.

Objectives: The aim of the study was to explore whether MRKHS women differ from control group when characteristics of dyadic intimate relationship are taken into account.

Material and methods: 32 women with MRKHS (M age=22.9) and 32 matched healthy controls (M age=24.75) were examined. Psychosexual biography by M. Beisert was used to gain information on: dyadic sexual behaviors, number of sexual partners, type of a relationship and age of the first relationship. Statistical differences between two groups were examined with the U Mann-Whitney test.

Selected results: Women with MRKHS initiated dyadic sexual activity at higher age than the controls (petting U=182.00; p<0.01; req=0.41; vaginal intercourse (U=64.00; 0<0.001; req=0.59; oral contact (U=91.50; p<0.05; req=0.56) with exception of anal intercourse, where the age of initiation was the same in both groups (U=30.50; ns). Gynecological patients had less sexual partners than their peers (U=267.00; p<0.01).

Conclusions: Differences in characteristics of intimate relationships constituted by MRKHS patients create complex image. Intrestingly, differences in dyadic sexual activity are not limited to vaginal intercourse as would be suggested by the description of MRKHS Syndrom. Thus, they are probably determined both by biological conditions and their psychological implications.

The paper explores marital partners’ personal conceptions of family and investigates the extent to which husbands and wives living in an in-tact family include same people in their family. The study draws from the configurational approach to family relations and discusses the multifaceted nature of contemporary kinship. We ask whether subjective understandings of men and women, collected in individual interviews, confine to the immediate nuclear family, and if not, who are those included: members of woman’s or man’s family of origin, her or his friends, or someone else? The data includes 32 qualitative interviews with women and men from 16 married couples, aged 25–41, living in Finland. The information on partners’ views on family was collected with Family Network Method (FNM) questionnaire. The results show that in all couples the woman’s and the man’s understanding of who belongs to the family differs. In the analysis we investigate the emerging patterns of convergence and divergence co-existing in a first-time family and discuss the contemporary family as constituted by interplay between emotional closeness and structural hierarchies of kinship.

Associations and organizations supporting parents during and after separation are an emerging phenomenon in Italy. They aim at helping separated parents to be effective in their parental tasks.

Studies on the role played by such associations for separated parents’ well-being and parental abilities are still lacking. The goal of the present study is to investigate whether and how the perception of being supported by the association together with the different level of engagement in the life of the association impact parents’ well-being and co-parenting abilities.

Three-hundred eighteen parents belonging to different Italian associations of separated parents participated in a web survey. They completed a self-report questionnaire containing several measures tapping different aspects of well-being and parental abilities. Data were preliminarily explored through analyses of variance comparing three groups of parents (based on the level of perceived support by the association and on the level of engagement in the association). First results showed differences among the groups in terms of well-being and co-parenting, indicating that associations may play a protective role during the separation. Further analyses are in progress.

Altruism is a voluntary action aiming to help others without reward expectation. In this type of action, the individual cares for others’ interests rather than those of his own. This type of behaviour goes beyond social norms and social relations which are in the area of social responsibility and falls into the sphere of morality. In other words, a person behaving in altruistic manner puts himself in another person’s shoes. The frequency of such actions in the society promises ethical behaviour and the lack of it is a threat to social order. In this regard the role of the family as one of the most important agent of socialization is highlighted. Children mimic many right and wrong behaviours of their parents in observational learning. Therefore parents with altruism among the Iranian families and show its process of change over a decade (from 2005 to 2015). The findings of a longitudinal study were used to achieve this objective. That is a survey done in 2005 for the first time and 2015 for the second time in two developed and less developed regions of Tehran by using multi-stage cluster sampling the size of sample in 2005 was 419 and in 2015 was 400 and descriptive- explanatory approach was used .

Key words:altruism,socialization,ethical behaviour,voluntary action,family relation.