The influence of social support on the wellbeing of immigrants residing in Italy: Sources and functions as predictive factors for life satisfaction levels, sense of community and resilience

Moving from one country to another involves not only separation from the country of origin, but also the tiring process of integration into a new physical, institutional, and sociocultural context, which may expose migrants to acculturation stress. The loss of former support networks, or at the very least their transformation, presents immigrants with the need to rebuild their social support systems in the host country, involving an active search for support. Therefore, the aim of study is to analyze the structure of informal social support and its capacity to predict immigrants’ sense of community, resilience, and satisfaction with life. The results confirm that social support predicts satisfaction with life, sense of community, and resilience. Our findings highlight the way sources and frequency of support, and the satisfaction with which they are associated, have different degrees of predictive value on the dependent variables under investigation. In this study, it can be concluded that social support is an important factor in the well-being of migrants and their integration into the host community. The results have an important practical value in promoting interventions that improve immigrants’ support networks and, consequently, increase their satisfaction with life, sense of community, and resilience

Cultural identification, perceived discrimination and sense of community as predictors of life satisfaction among foreign partners of intercultural families in Italy and Spain: A transnational study

The  aim  of  this  paper  was  to  analyze  how  cultural  identification,  perceived  discrimination   and  the  sense  of  community  are  related  to  life  satisfaction  among  foreign  partners  in  intercultural   families.   The  study  compared  105  and  95  foreign  partners  in  mixed  families  resident  in  Italy  and  Spain,   respectively.  The  phenomenon  in  both  countries  displays  similar  sociodemographic  aspects.  In   contrast  to  Social  Identity  Theory,  the  results  show  that  in  both  groups  the  foreign  partner's   identification  with  their  own  ethnic-­‐cultural  group  is  not  associated  with  life  satisfaction,  nor  does  it   increase  perceived  discrimination.  In  turn,  increased  perceived  discrimination  leads  to  a  decreased   sense  of  community  and  life  satisfaction  among  foreigners.  Regarding  religion,  interreligious  couples  in   Italy  perceive  more  discrimination  than  mono-­‐religious  couples.  Finally,  we  found  that  a  low  sense  of   discrimination  and  a  strong  sense  of  community  is  related  to  life  satisfaction  among  mixed  families  in   both  groups.  The  implications  of  the  study  are  described  and  suggestions  for  future  research  discussed

Participation as a mechanism to favour psychological empowerment and positive interaction: The “Ágora Infantil” participatory democracy programme

This investigation aims to show the relationship between participation and psychological empowerment and between participation and interaction under an institutional political participation programme. This initiative known as Ágora Infantil (AI) is characterised by an obligatory draw‐ based deliberative participation methodology with superordinate goals based on group dynamics, with games playing a central role. The evaluation was carried out using a quasi‐experimental design, with quantitative measurements of the experimental and control groups, along with systematic observation of the target group. The results support the hypotheses proposed: Participation in the AI programme led to an increase in psychological empowerment and positive interactions between the participants. These results offer information as to what design should be used for these types of political initiatives to favour inclusion and empowerment of children, while at the same time improving classroom relationships

How to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Abduction is the solution to pseudo-empiricism

Few scholars can be said to have provided the scientific community with such a clear and simple idea that also has the disruptive power to outline a paradigm shift in psychology. Jan Smedslund is one of them, having given us the notion of Pseudoempirical Research (Smedslund 1991; see also 1982, 1988, 1992, 1995, 2016). Pseudoempirical research is the research that empirically tests a hypothesis that can be known from reasoning on what is conceptually implied by the knowledge grounding the hypothesis itself. “The sum of a triangle’s angles is 180°” is a paradigmatic instance of a priori and noncontingent proposition provided by Smedslund. Research aimed at measuring the angles of a triangle would be pseudoempirical because it is already known that their sum is 180° since this is logically implied in the definition of triangle itself

Cascades of emotional support in friendship networks and adolescent smoking

Social support from peers and parents provides a key socialization function during adolescence. We examine adolescent friendship networks using a Stochastic Actor-Based modeling approach to observe the flow of emotional support provision to peers and the effect of support from parents, while simultaneously modeling smoking behavior. We utilized one school (n = 976) from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (AddHealth) Study. Our findings suggest that emotional support is transacted through an interdependent contextual system, comprised of both peer and parental effects, with the latter also having distal indirect effects from youths' friends' parents