Measuring implicit European and Mediterranean landscape identity. A tool proposal

This study presents a tool - the Landscape Identity Implicit Association Test (LI-IAT) - devoted to measure the implicit identification with European and Mediterranean landscapes. To this aim, a series of prototypical landscapes was selected as stimulus, following an accurate multi-step procedure. Participants (N = 174), recruited in two Italian cities, performed two LI-IATs devoted to assess their identification with European vs. Not-European and Mediterranean vs. Not-Mediterranean prototypical landscapes. Psychometric properties and criterion validity of these measures were investigated. Two self-report measures, assessing, respectively, European and Mediterranean place identity and pleasantness of the target landscapes, were also administered. Results showed: (1) an adequate level of internal consistency for both LI-IATs; (2) a higher identification with European and Mediterranean landscapes than, respectively, with Not-European and Not-Mediterranean ones; and (3) a significant positive relationship between the European and Mediterranean LI-IATs and the corresponding place identity scores, also when pleasantness of landscapes was controlled for. Overall, these findings provide a first evidence supporting the reliability and criterion validity of the European and Mediterranean LI-IAT

Factor Structure and Criterion Validity of an Enlarged Version of the Parental Bonding Instrument

Factorial structure and criterion validity of an enlarged version of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI-E) were evaluated in a community sample of young adults. This enlarged version was obtained by adding parental favouritism (FAV) and put-down/shaming (PUT_D) to the original care and overprotection (OV) scales as recalled by the offspring. Factor analysis suggested a five factor model as the best solution, identifying CARE, FAV and PUT_D and splitting the overprotection items into two factors, denial of psychological autonomy (DPA) and discouragement of behavioural freedom, (DBF) with Cronbach's alphas ranging from .77 to .92. These five scales were correlated with depression and anxiety of the offspring, measured by BDI and STAI. Both of them correlated negatively with care and positively with the other parental scales, as expected by Parker's theory on the role of affectionless control for the psychopathological vulnerability of the children. A series of hierarchical regression analyses, including CARE, DPA and DBF at the first step and FAV and PUT_D at the second step, showed that the latter enhanced the predictive power of the instrument. Overall these findings: (1) suggest a five factor structure for the PBI-E and (2) confirm the criterion validity of the PBI scales in respect to children's depression and anxiety, providing also compelling evidence for the incremental validity of Gilbert's scales

Is it possible to measure narcissism implicitly?

Introduction: In recent years there has been a rise in the number of university students seeking psychological treatment for their mental health issues that have important implications for academic functioning. Psychodynamic counselling aims at promoting a process of selfreflection, self-discovery and meaning-making, focused on overcoming an ongoing crisis of students and their academic projects. Method: The present study focused on outcomes of psychodynamic counselling providing information regarding an effective short-term treatment in university students needing psychological help at the Counselling Center of Sapienza, University of Rome. This service offers four counselling sessions and a later three-month follow-up session. A total of 105 subjects were involved in the present study. The sample was divided into two groups: students (N=66) who received intervention (Experimental Group) and those (N=39) waiting for intervention (Control Group). Before the first and after the forth clinical session all participants completed the following measures: the WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0); the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45.2); the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Brief Form (PID-5-BF). The change following the intervention of psychodynamic counselling was assessed through the multivariate analysis of covariance for evaluating differences between the experimental and control groups on the outcomes’ mean scores. Results: As expected, results showed that some of SCL-90-R, OQ-45 and WHODAS subscales were significantly lower in the experimental group with respect to the control group. Conclusions: Although findings highlighted the usefulness of psychodynamic counselling intervention, they should be considered preliminary because part of an ongoing research and needed to be confirmed

APPLYING IMPLICIT MEASURES TO ASSESS NARCISSISM

Narcissism is a personality trait characterizing individuals with a grandiose sense of themselves, a lack of empathy and a marked tendency to devaluate other people (e.g. Kohut, 1968; Kernberg, 1967). In order to assess both normal and pathological facets of narcissism, different self-report instruments were developed (e.g. NPI; Raskin e Hall, 1979). Importantly, grandiose self-views and devaluations of other people are particularly prone to impression management and self-deceptive attempts, and thus, self-report scores of narcissism may be considerably biased in order to preserve social and private self-image. Recently, dual models of social cognition were developed (e.g. Strack & Deutch, 2004), providing an interesting conceptual framework to address the factors that may threaten the validity of self-report measures. Many attempts have been conducted to develop reliable and valid implicit measures of psychological constructs (e.g. IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998; RRT; De Houwer et al., 2015). The present study is aimed at applying for the first time the IAT and the RRT to measure narcissism evaluating their psychometric characteristics, reliability and validity. A Narcissism IAT and Narcissism RRT along with a series of other instruments were administered to 103 students (78 females), with a mean age of 24.31 (SD = 7.34), recruited at the Sapienza University of Rome. An adequate reliability emerged for both implicit measures of narcissism, and significant correlations of small-moderate size were found with self-report measures of narcissism, and other linked constructs (p < .05), supporting their construct and criterion validity. These results provided a first evidence for the validity of these new implicit measures. Other studies will be conducted in order to assess their discriminative power for the distinction between healthy and pathological narcissism

I valori e il modello di Schwartz

L’obiettivo di questo capitolo è, in primo luogo, quello di fornire un’introduzione generale al tema dei valori. Successivamente verranno presentate le teorie di Milton Rokeach e Shalom Schwartz, che occupano una posizione centrale nel panorama internazionale sul tema dei valori. Prenderemo in considerazione soprattutto la tassonomia di Schwartz, descrivendo le caratteristiche del modello e alcune sue applicazioni pratiche

Il ruolo dei tratti percepiti e dell’atteggiamento di voto nella previsione del comportamento elettorale: un modello esplicativo.

The present study aims to provide a contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms at the roots of electoral choice. We examined the impact on voting behaviour of participants’ attitudes toward voting for a given coalition and the personality traits they attributed to the respective leaders. Findings from 120 voters underlined the meditational role of attitudes: perceived integrity and leadership traits positively affect the attitude towards voting for the respective coalition, which in turn predict the electoral choice. A significant interaction between leadership and integrity also emerged: the beta weight of the trait with the higher predictive validity (leadership for centre-left candidate and integrity for centre-right candidate) is higher when the other trait is highly attributed to the politician. Practical implications about the most efficient ways of conveying favourable images of candidates were advanced

Il modello alternativo dei disturbi di personalitá nel DSM-5 e le sue implicazioni per la perizia in ambito canonico

The present paper is aimed at illustrating the alternative model of personality disorders (PD), included in the DSM-5 system, with a series of possible implications for the expert report in the canon law field. In order to do this, the DSMIV TR diagnostic system with its limits as well as the new criterions of DSM-5 alternative model of PD were systematically presented and articulated. In particular, a series of new proposals, included in the alternative model, were illustrated and critically evaluated, clarifying their role for the improvement of DSM-IV TR unresolved questions, such as the excessive comorbidity of PD categories, the high heterogeneity of individuals with the same PD diagnosis, the obsolete approach to diagnostic thresholds, the temporal instability of diagnoses, the narrow range of personality psychopathology considered and the lack of a theoretical model, empirically founded, that is able to support the criterions. Improvements that DSM-5 alternative model may involve for the expert report in the canon law field, especially regarding the link between diagnostic label and legal incapacity, are discussed

Self-Esteem Implicit Association Test: A State or Trait Measure?

In the last decades, several models of implicit social cognition were used to explain the distinction between automatic vs. controlled self-related evaluations. On the basis of this theoretical framework, several implicit measures have been proposed to assess the automatic level of self-evaluations and beliefs. Among them, the most common is surely the Self-Esteem Implicit Association Test (SE-IAT), which exhibited clear evidence of reliability and validity. Interestingly, various studies showed that the internal consistency of SE-IAT showed usually higher values than test-retest correlation, suggesting that self-esteem automatic associations can be considerably affected by situational factors. In particular, it was shown that SE-IAT scores can be influenced by evaluative conditioning, subtle social signals, personal threats, academic feedback or also psychotherapeutic treatments. Moreover, importantly, also a series of cognitive factors may influence contextually IAT scores, such as attentional foci when completing the IAT, test-taking strategies, implicit learning effects, and other components of the response processes that do not reflect associations per se. Overall, these studies suggest that SE-IAT scores include a state component which depends on both true self-esteem fluctuations and also method variations due to the IAT experimental paradigm. In a Recent study, a mono-construct Latent State-Trait (LST) analysis was applied to SE-IAT scores across five different observations, and a second multi-construct LST model was a conducted across two observations in order to compare implicit and explicit variance components. Results revealed: (1) state and trait variances of similar size for the SE-IAT; (2) a higher consistency, a lower occasion-specificity and a lower error variance for the explicit SE with respect to implicit SE; (3) a moderate and positive correlation between implicit and explicit SE latent traits. Theoretical implications and future research directions were discussed