Gender differences in social and test anxiety
Abstract Some cognitive and performance correlates of ‘worry’ and ‘emotionality’ components of test-anxiety were studied with particular reference to gender differences. An Italian adaptation of the Worry-Emotionality (W-E) Scale was administered to a sample of 99 high-school students, together with other scales devised to assess ‘Fear of negative evaluation’ and the subjects' perception of the real, ideal and social aspects of the Self. The Grade Point Average was taken as outcome measure of academic performance. The results show that in the male subjects, Worry correlates, as expected, with poor self-image and with negative academic performance; more complex correlations are found in fema…
Motivation and personality traits for choosing religious tourism. A research on the case of Medjugorje
Religion has long been a primary motivation for journeys and it is considered the oldest non-economic reason for travelling. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons tourists choose to travel to sacred sites, with the specific aim of discovering relationships between personality traits and motivations for religious travel. Participating in the research were 679 Italian travellers to Medjugorje sanctuary, who completed the travel motivation scale and big five questionnaire. The results show that motivation is focused prevalently on the need for discovery in men and socialisation in women. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that personality traits are predictive of motiv…
Mental Models vs Integrated Models: Explanations of Syllogistic Reasoning
To compare mental versus integrated models explanations of syllogistic reasoning, we administered a multiple-choice questionnaire containing 19 pairs of syllogistic premises with valid conclusions (given in a C-A order) to 72 psychology undergraduates. Association between our integrated models classification and the empirical difficulty of items was strong.
A comparison between motivations and personality traits in religious tourists and cruise ship tourists
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the motivations and the personality traits that characterize tourists who choose religious travels versus cruises. Participating in the research were 683 Italian tourists (345 males and 338 females, age range 18–63 years); 483 who went to a pilgrimage travel and 200 who chose a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Both groups of tourists completed the Travel Motivation Scale and the Big Five Questionnaire. Results show that different motivations and personality traits characterize the different types of tourists and, further, that motivations for traveling are predicted by specific —some similar, other divergent— personality traits
Do personality traits and self-regulatory processes affect decision-making tendencies?
Objective: This research attempted to clarify the role played by personality traits and self-regulated motivation in affecting decision-making tendencies. Method: Study 1 (n = 209) examined whether the Big Five personality traits predict minimising, maximising, and satisficing tendencies; Study 2 (n = 460) tested the mediating role of self-regulatory orientations in the relationship between personality traits and decision-making tendencies by performing structural equation modelling with latent variables. Results: Conscientiousness emerged as the strongest positive predictor of maximising, whereas openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness emerged as negative predictors of…
Decisional Procrastination in Academic Settings: The Role of Metacognitions and Learning Strategies
Nowadays, university students suffer from a broad range of problems, such as educational underachievement or the inability to control themselves, that lead to procrastination as a consequence. The present research aimed at analyzing the determinants of decisional procrastination among undergraduate students and at assessing a path model in which self regulated learning strategies mediated the relationship between metacognitive beliefs about procrastination and decisional procrastination. 273 students from Southern Italy filled out a questionnaire composed by: the socio-demographic section, the Metacognitive Beliefs About Procrastination Questionnaire, the procrastination subscale of the Mel…
Differences in achievement not in intelligence in the north and south of Italy: Comments on
Abstract Lynn (2010a, 2010b) argued that individuals from south Italy have a lower IQ than individuals from north Italy, and that these differences in IQ are at the basis of north–south gap in income, education, infant mortality, stature, and literacy. In the present paper, we discuss several theoretical and methodological aspects which we regard as flaws of Lynn's studies. Moreover, we report scores of southern Italian children on Raven's Progressive Matrices and a north–south comparison for the PASS theory of intelligence as measured by the Cognitive Assessment System (Taddei & Naglieri, 2006). Both results reveal similar levels of performance of northern and southern Italian children in …
About some psychological variables correlated with dogmatism
The relationships between dogmatism and some perceptual-cognitive, personality, and attitudinal indices were investigated for 40 men and 40 women. Dogmatism scores correlated negatively with the scores in Witkin's Group Embedded Figures Test and on the Flexibility scale from Gough's California Psychological Inventory. Correlations were positive for a favorable attitude towards concepts like Discipline, Obedience, Social order, measured by the semantic differential. Some incongruities between obtained data and Rokeach's (1960) findings are pointed out.