0000000000771425
AUTHOR
Nicolò Maria Iannello
Parental Monitoring and Youth's Binge Behaviors: The Role of Sensation Seeking and Life Satisfaction
Framed within an ecological perspective of the onset of adolescent problem behaviors, the current study explored the joint role of parent-adolescents’ relationships and youth's individual factors in binge eating and drinking. Firstly, in line with pieces of research highlighting the beneficial impact of effective parenting on youth development, the present paper sought to enhance the knowledge about the positive influence of parental monitoring on youth's binge drinking and eating. Moreover, since literature evidenced that the explanatory mechanisms of the association between parental monitoring and binge behaviors are not fully explored, the study focused on the potential intervening role …
Mutual intercultural relations among immigrant and autochthonous youth in Italy. Testing the integration, multiculturalism, and contact hypotheses
Italy is increasingly becoming a culturally complex society. This poses numerous challenges for developmental and educational psychology, mainly in terms of how to encourage adequate levels of social harmony by promoting positive development of both immigrant and autochthonous youth. Within this perspective, the current paper presents the Italian findings of the Mutual Intercultural Relations in Plural Societies (MIRIPS) international project, postulating the centrality of three core hypotheses: integration, multiculturalism, and contact. Two studies were performed to investigate these hypotheses. Study 1 comprised 188 Tunisian adolescents aged 13-18 (51% F; Mage=15.94), while Study 2 inclu…
Individual Differences in Adolescents’ Civic Engagement: The Role of Civic Discussions with Parents and Environmental Sensitivity
The main goal of the current study was to examine the direct and moderating effects of civic dis-cussions with parents and environmental sensitivity using both the total score and its specific di-mensions (i.e., Aesthetic Sensitivity, AES; Ease of Excitation, EOE; Low Sensitivity Threshold, LST) on youth civic engagement (attitudes and behaviours). The empirical analysis relied on a ques-tionnaire-based survey conducted on a sample of 438 adolescents (30% males), aged between 14 and 18 years (M = 16.50, SD = 1.36). We used a structural equation model (SEM) with latent vari-ables and the latent moderated structural equation (LMS) method to test our hypotheses. Our re-sults showed that civic …
Maternal Parenting and Preschoolers’ Psychosocial Adjustment: A Longitudinal Study
Previous research reported that positive parenting and parenting stress might impact children’s psychosocial adjustment. The current longitudinal study aimed at evaluating the associations over time between mothers’ positive parenting, their parenting stress, and their preschoolers’ social–emotional competence and emotional–behavioral difficulties. Participants were 53 Italian mothers, aged between 24 and 47 years (M = 35.30, SD = 5.28) at T0, and their children (females = 51%), aged between 3 and 6 years (M = 4.48, SD = 0.84) at T0. Mothers completed self-report scales at 2 time points (with a 2-year lag). An autoregressive cross-lagged model was tested that h…
Promoting Democratic and Intercultural Competences in the Primary School Context: The experience of “Children’s Voices for a new Human Space”
The promotion of citizen’s democratic and intercultural competence is one of the main actions that European societies may take against some of the most significant challenges they are facing nowadays. The paper is aimed at briefly describing the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, some actions that can be taken to promote democratic and intercultural competences and a case of implementation of this framework in the context of primary school, that is the Erasmus+ Project “Children’s Voices for a new Human Space” (CVS). The paper also aims at illustrating the intellectual outputs produced by CVS project consisting in a training course for teachers, a…
The Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS)
Abstract. The current study proposed the adaptation of the Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS) to the religious domain as an instrument to measure both individuals’ religious identity formation processes (when a variable-centered approach is adopted) and religious identity statuses (when a person-centered approach is adopted). The scale has been tested on a sample of 727 Italian participants aged 13–65 years, by collecting evidence of score structure, convergent, and criterion-related validity. Regarding the score structure validity, we confirmed that religious identity formation consists of three processes (commitment, in-depth exploration, reconsideration of commitm…
Spirituality and Ethnocultural Empathy Among Italian Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Religious Identity Formation Processes
The current study examined the unique and combined roles of spirituality and religious identity formation processes on ethnocultural empathy among Italian youth. Spirituality was conceptualized as a desire for self-transcendence. Ethnocultural empathy entails concern for those of other cultural backgrounds. It was hypothesized that spirituality would predict ethnocultural empathy indirectly by way of religious identity commitment and in-depth exploration. Religious identity commitment is the extent to which people have invested in a particular religious worldview and community, whereas religious identity in-depth exploration is the degree to which they are actively seeking to learn more abo…
The Contribution of Religiosity and Optimism on Well-Being of Youth and Emerging Adults in Italy
In line with Positive Youth Development (PYD) framework positing that religion can provide youth with resources to thrive, this chapter presents a contribution analyzing the associations between religiosity and well-being among middle and late adolescents, and emerging adults in Italy. In fact, this country is a relevant context for studying this topic, considering the social and historical presence of Catholicism. We conceptualized religiosity as religious commitment and well-being as life satisfaction. Then, we focused on the mediating role of optimism between these two constructs and investigated differences among age groups concerning those associations. A multiple-group path analysis r…
The Contribution of Bullying Involvement and Alexithymia to Somatic Complaints in Preadolescents
Somatic complaints during preadolescence are connected to individual and contextual factors, and extant research highlights the relevance of alexithymia and bullying involvement. In this cross-sectional study, we explored the joint and unique influence of bullying involvement—as perpetrators, victims, or outsiders—and alexithymia on somatic complaints in a sample of 179 Italian middle-school students (aged 11–15). Findings revealed an indirect association between bullying perpetration and victimization complaints through alexithymia. We also found a significant direct association between victimization and somatic complaints. No significant association between outsider beha…