L'altruismo tra scienze sociali e vita quotidiana

Adolescents with Neuropsychiatric Disorders during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Focus on Emotional Well-Being and Parental Stress

(1) Introduction: The aim of our research was to explore emotional/behavioral changes in adolescents with neuropsychiatric conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and parental stress levels through a standardized assessment, comparing the data collected before and during the first months of lockdown. Moreover, an additional goal was to detect a possible relationship between emotional/behavioural symptoms of adolescents and the stress levels of their parents. (2) Methods: We enrolled 178 Italian adolescents aged between 12–18 that were referred to the Child Neuropsychiatry Unit of the University Hospital of Salerno with different neuropsychiatric diagnoses. Two standardized questionnaires w…

The functioning of social network in computer mediated communication

The Effect of Perspective-Taking on Linguistic Intergroup Bias

In this experiment, we examined the effect of perspective-taking—actively contemplating others’ psychological experiences—on linguistic intergroup bias. We asked some participants to adopt the perspective of a character (an Italian or a Maghrebian), while others did not receive similar instructions, and complete a short dialogue comprised of a series of vignettes, resulting in a 2 (perspective-taking: presence vs. control) × 2 (group: ingroup vs. outgroup) between-participants design. We analyzed the texts produced on the basis of the linguistic category model. As expected, participants were more likely to describe the outgroup member using less abstract terms when we asked them to take th…

The effect of prosocial priming in the presence of bystanders.

This study investigated the influence of priming and bystander apathy on helping behavior. After priming prosociality through a scrambled sentences test, participants encountered a woman who dropped the books she was carrying. Helping behavior in bystander and no-bystander conditions was tested. The results showed that people in a prosocial-prime condition were more likely to help than people in a neutral-prime condition, and that the effect of priming persists even in the presence of bystanders.

Leaders’ Style, Self-Sacrifice, and Team Identification

Leadership is a group feature that directly impacts on team identification. Effective leaders are especially capable of fostering group cohesiveness and promoting efficacy in goal attainment. We assessed the relationship between transactional and transformational leadership style, team identification, and leader self-sacrifice. Participants were 186 call center employees who were headed by a leader who operated with either a transactional or a transformational leadership style. The employees reported their level of team identification and leader self-sacrifice. Results show how, in either the transactional or transformational leadership condition, levels of leadership and self-sacrifice wer…

The effect of social norms and the presence of bystanders on altruistic behavior

In this chapter, prosocial behavior will be analyzed from a social psychology point of view, examining the theoretical contributions of the past ten years and highlighting the various interpretations that have been proposed. Specifically, the focus will be on the analysis of the motivations that characterize a person who behaves altruistically. Theoretical models that will be examined include those that consider the possibility of a genuine altruistic motivation, as well as those that hypothesize that true altruism does not exist. In fact, it will be shown how the motivation behind altruistic behavior has been interpreted differently by social psychologists as being either intrinsically ego…

Maximizers’ Susceptibility to the Effect of Frequency vs. Percentage Format in Risk Representation

The present study explored the susceptibility of maximizers to the effect of the specific information format—frequency vs. percentage—in a risk assessment task. One-hundred and fourteen participants were randomized into two experimental conditions: a frequency format and a percentage format. In both conditions, participants had to rate the level of risk that a mental patient would harm someone after his discharge from a mental health facility, based on the information reported in the psychologist’s assessment for that patient. In the frequency condition, the information was presented in terms of frequencies, whereas in the percentage condition the same information was pres…

Autoconsapevolezza oggettiva, spazio personale e comportamento d’aiuto.

Automatic Influences of Priming on Prosocial Behavior

Literature on the automaticity of social behavior indicates that, in some circumstances, priming a concept automatically activates related behavioral schemas. Previous research studies have used priming techniques to increase willingness to help, but most of these have simply measured intention to engage in prosocial behavior rather than real helping behavior. Two different studies investigated the effect of priming the concept of prosocial behavior on real helping behavior. After priming prosociality through a scrambled sentences test, participants were shown to increase their donation rate after a direct request coming from an experimenter's confederate (Study 1) and to spontaneously help…

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…

The Fairness Principle, Reward, and Altruistic Behavior

The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between reward and altruism. It was hypothesized that the altruistic behavior of someone who has been asked for help will occur only after the person asking for help has been evaluated. As a result, if the situation of a person asking for help is perceived as less fortunate, help will be given even if no proportional award is received in return, according to a principle based on need that makes people feel they should help the needy. Results show that when the participants received an unfair award, they tended to offer much bigger donations only in the condition in which the other was perceived as less fortunate. jasp_749 1110..1120…

L’atteggiamento nei confronti della pubblicità comparativa: efficacia persuasiva dei messaggi bilaterali

The effect of a comparative advertising on attitude toward the brand and on attitude toward the ad was studied. In the first experiment, a comparative and a not-comparative advertising of a fictitious brand of stroller for children has been presented to 160 subjects. Results demonstrate that subjects, when exposed to a comparative communication, are likely to scrutiny the persuasive message and the elaboration tend to be high. The analysis shows moreover that comparative advertising evokes a less favorable attitude toward the ad. In the second experiment, the persuasive effectiveness of a two-sided messages compared to one-sided message was verified. Finally, in the third experiment we hypo…

Dimensioni metacognitive nella persuasione

Stereotypes in Persuasive Communication: Influence Exerted by a Disapproved Source

The present paper examines how someone's use of stereotypes can exert influence over others’ judgments. In the 2 studies reported here, participants were presented with messages containing information provided by a source. In Study 1, the source was an in-group member. The messages were manipulated in a between-subjects design so that participants were either given stereotypical or counterstereotypical information. After being given a hint regarding the source's estimate, participants were asked to provide their own estimates about a number of points displayed on a computer screen. Results indicate that participants tended to use as an anchor the estimate provided by the source that made us…

EQUITA' E ALTRUISMO

Self-awareness, Perspective-taking, and Egocentrism

AbstractThe present experiment examined the effect of self-awareness on adult perspective-taking and egocentrism. After having indicated their own opinion on an ecology-related topic, university students estimated a fellow student’s opinion on the same matter. Participants did so either in front of a mirror or not, and either after having received a cue for the fellow student’s most probable opinion—his perspective—or not, resulting in a 2 (self-awareness: Low vs. high) × 2 (cue: Yes vs. no) between persons design. As expected, self-aware participants were more likely to correctly estimate the fellow student’s most probable opinion, reflecting perspective-taking, if a cue for his/her perspe…

Automatic Influences of Priming on Prosocial Behavior

Literature on the automaticity of social behavior indicates that in some circumstances, priming a concept automatically activates related behavioral schemas. Previous research studies have used priming techniques to increase willingness to help, but most of these have simply measured intention to engage in prosocial behavior rather than real helping behavior. Two different studies investigated the effect of priming the concept of prosocial behavior on real helping behavior. After priming prosociality through a scrambled sentences test, participants were shown to increase their donation rate after a direct request coming from an experimenter's confederate (study 1) and to spontaneously help …

Appartenenza etnica e stereotipi in Sicilia: l’influenza della minaccia indotta dallo stereotipo sulle prestazioni scolastiche e sull’autovalutazione dei bambini immigrati.

Prosocial priming and bystander effect in an online context.

The present study tested the effect of priming the concept of prosociality on the bystander effect in an online environment. Participants were sent an e-mail requesting a plea for help and randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (Bystander: 0 vs. 14) × 2 (Priming: present vs. absent) design. The results demonstrated support for the study hypothesis. As expected, the virtual presence of many others significantly reduced e-mail responsiveness except when the request for help is preceded by prosocial priming. Implications of these findings for the literature on the bystander effect and priming are discussed.

Reti comunicative ed interazioni virtuali nella soluzione di dilemmi sociali on line

Caratteristiche psicologiche e dinamiche interpersonali dei minori ospiti delle comunità.

A field experiment on perspective taking, helping, and self awareness

The present field experiment examines the effect of self-awareness on adult perspective-taking and on prosocial behavior. University students at an Italian university were interviewed briefly on their campus, and for half of them self-awareness was induced by asking them to hold a mirror before their faces. In the same context they then had to choose between a postcard written in Italian and 1 written in English, to be sent to England. This led to a measure of perspective-taking, and their actual readiness to mail the postcard was taken as an index of prosocial or helping behavior. Both perspective-taking and helping behavior were boosted considerably by self-awareness.

The effect of perspective taking on the mediation process

Stefano Boca, Maria Garro, Isabella Giammusso, Costanza Scaffidi Abbate Department of Psychology, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy Background: Previous research demonstrated several benefits of strategic perspective taking in the field of intergroup relations and, more specifically, in the negotiation processes aimed at conflict resolution. The present study, which analyzes the effect of perspective taking and mediation in a conflict setting, corroborates the psychological models that hypothesize the positive effects of the assumption of the competitor’s perspective on having intergroup conflict and lessening of negative consequences. Materials and methods: After being involv…

Priming Effects on Commitment to Help and on Real Helping Behavior

Years of research on bystander apathy have demonstrated that the physical presence of others can reduce the tendency to help individuals needing assistance. Recent research on the implicit bystander effect has suggested that simply imagining the presence of others can lead to less helping behavior on a subsequent unrelated task. The present study was designed to contribute to previous findings on the implicit bystander effect by demonstrating these effects on commitment to help and on real helping behavior, rather than simply on intentions to help. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrate that merely priming participants with the construct of being in a group at Time 1 created significantly less commi…

Appartenenza etnica e stereotipi in Sicilia: l’influenza indotta dallo stereotipo sulle prestazioni scolastiche e sull’autovalutazione dei bambini immigrati

Lo sleeper effect e l’ipotesi esplicativa del decadimento differenziale

Attivazione del costrutto altruismo ed effetto diretto sul comportamento.

Effetti di Priming sul comportamento d'aiuto

Previous research studies have used priming techniques to increase willingness to help, but most of these have simply measured intention to engage in prosocial behavior rather than real helping behavior. Two different studies investigated the effect of priming the concept of prosocial behavior on real helping behavior. After priming prosociality through a scrambled sentences test, participants were shown to increase their donation rate after a direct request coming from an experimenter's confederate (Study 1) and to spontaneously help to a greater extent a girl whose books had fallen on the floor (Study 2). The implications of this automatic behavior priming effect are discussed within the …

Dimensioni stereotipiche nella comunicazione turistica

Le basi (neuro) biologiche dei processi cognitivi e affettivi sottostanti il comportamento presociale

Psychological Well-Being among Adolescents and Youth.

Today, the construct of well‐being has assumed increasing importance in various areas of psychology by identifying several factors of personal order (personality dispositions, self‐esteem, perception of control), interpersonal (social support), and socioeconomic (income, level of education), variables that can influence well‐being to a greater or lesser extent. Research on the construct has been derived from two influential approaches or perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on pleasure and happiness and on the achievement of well-being through the satisfaction of one’s desires, and the eudaimonic approach, according to which well-being is obtained by fulfilling one’s potential …

Can We Do Better Next Time? Italians' Response to the COVID-19 Emergency through a Heuristics and Biases Lens.

During the outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy, people often failed to adopt behaviors that could have stopped, or at least slowed down, the spread of this deadly disease. We offer cognitive explanations for these decisions, based on some of the most common heuristics and biases that are known to influence human judgment and decision-making, especially under conditions of high uncertainty. Our analysis concludes with the following recommendations: policymakers can and should take advantage of this established science, in order to communicate more effectively and increase the likelihood that people choose responsible actions in a public health crisis.

Il Product Placement alla luce dell’effetto della mere exposure

Minacce all'autostima nelle relazioni intergruppi

Le basi (neuro)biologiche dei processi cognitivi e affettivi sottostanti il comportamento prosociale

Il sistema di valutazione

Future Orientation and Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression in Italian University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Resilience and the Perceived Threat of COVID-19

Several studies have already examined the psychological impact of COVID-19 on psychological well-being in samples of the general population. However, given the importance of future orientation for university students’ mental well-being, it is important to explore whether and how COVID-19 affected this vulnerable population. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the protective role of future orientation and the mediating effect of resilience on negative emotional symptoms (anxiety and depression). An online questionnaire was administered to a sample of 244 non-infected Italian university students. The mediation analysis results indicated that resilience fully mediated the relation…

The welfare of immigrants: Resilience and sense of community

The accessibility to national health services by immigrants residing in our country has produced a widespread improve- ment of health indicators and health prevention for the entire population. The main goal of this study is to investigate the welfare conditions of immigrants, alongside two fundamental sources of psychological resources. In particular, the role of resilience and sense of community as protective factors against the risk of developing negative welfare outcomes, including life satisfaction and the perception of general health (physical and mental), were considered as indicators. The following self- report questionnaires were sent to a sample of 354 immi- grants, stratified by …

Attivazione del costrutto di altruismo ed effetto diretto sul comportamento

Introduzione alla psicologia sociale

il volume contiene lo stato dell'arte della disciplina esposto in termini accessibili agli studenti. in particolare vengono trattati gli argomenti relativi alla percezione sociale, agli aspetti psicosociali del Sé, agli atteggiamenti, al pregiudizio e agli stereotipi, il conflitto intergruppi, l'influenza sociale, l'aggressività e l'altruismo

Il comportamento altruistico tra scienze sociali e vita quotidiana

La comunicazione sui social network. Una analisi mediante il modello delle categorie linguistiche

Introduzione L'avvento di Internet, ed in particolare dei Social Network Site e del Web 2.0, ha rivoluzionato le interazioni sociali tra gli individui nel corso dell'ultimo decennio. I blog, Facebook e Twitter sono i tre principali strumenti che hanno contribuito a trasformare il nostro modo di comunicare, sempre meno visto come un processo passivo, e sempre più orientato lungo la dimensione dell'interazione. Numerose sono infatti le ricerche che hanno analizzato il fenomeno del passaparola all'interno di questi contesti. Obiettivi e Metodi Obiettivo del presente studio è l'analisi delle comunicazioni all'interno dei contesti virtuali del Web 2.0. In particolare, sono stati raffrontati gli …

A Field Experiment on Perspective-Taking, Helping, and Self-Awareness

The present field experiment examines the effect of self-awareness on adult perspective-taking and on prosocial behavior. University students at an Italian university were interviewed briefly on their campus, and for half of them self-awareness was induced by asking them to hold a mirror before their faces. In the same context they then had to choose between a postcard written in Italian and 1 written in English, to be sent to England. This led to a measure of perspective-taking, and their actual readiness to mail the postcard was taken as an index of prosocial or helping behavior. Both perspective-taking and helping behavior were boosted considerably by self-awareness.

Modelli psicologici di helping behavior

The Fairness Principle, Reward, and Altruistic Behavior

The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between reward and altruism. It was hypothesized that the altruistic behavior of someone who has been asked for help will occur only after the person asking for help has been evaluated. As a result, if the situation of a person asking for help is perceived as less fortunate, help will be given even if no proportional award is received in return, according to a principle based on need that makes people feel they should help the needy. Results show that when the participants received an unfair award, they tended to offer much bigger donations only in the condition in which the other was perceived as less fortunate.

The Role of Guilt and Empathy on Prosocial Behavior.

Research on the effects of guilt on interpersonal relationships has shown that guilt frequently motivates prosocial behavior in dyadic social situations. When multiple persons are involved, however, this emotion can be disadvantageous for other people in the social environment. Two experiments were carried out to examine the effect of guilt and empathy on prosocial behavior in a context in which more than two people are involved. Experiment 1 investigates whether, in three-person situations, guilt motivates prosocial behavior with beneficial effects for the victim of one’s actions but disadvantageous effects for the third individual. Participants were faced with a social dilemma in wh…

A Beggar, Self-Awareness And Willingness To Help

The present field experiment examines the relationship between self-awareness, violation of personal space and helping  behavior. A beggar asking for alms on the streets. To induce the first experimental condition, the state of objective self-awareness, the beggar had a mirror at chest height, suspended from a string round his neck. In the control condition, in place of the mirror, the beggar held a similarly dimensioned piece of cardboard in the same position. Both mirror and cardboard bore the message "A FEW PENNIES THANKS." As concerned the second experimental condition, the beggar either stood still waiting for people to come up to him, or walked toward the people as they approached, th…