Social environment and attitudes toward COVID-19 anti-contagious measures: an explorative study from Italy

Social and cultural aspects (i.e., political decision making, discourses in the public sphere, and people’s mindsets) played a crucial role in the ways people responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Framed with the Semiotic-Cultural Psychological Theory (SCPT), the present work aims to explore how individual ways of making sense of their social environment affected individuals’ perception of government measures aimed at managing the pandemic and the adherence to such measures. An online survey was administered from January to April 2021 to the Italian population. Retrieved questionnaires (N = 378) were analyzed through a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to detect the factorial dimensions underpinning (dis)similarities in the respondents’ ways of interpreting their social environment. Extracted factors were interpreted as markers of Latent Dimensions of Sense (LDSs) organizing respondents’ worldviews. Finally, three regression models tested the role of LDSs in supporting the individual satisfaction with the measures adopted to contain the social contagion defined at national level, individual adherence to the containment measures and the perception of the population’s adherence to them. Results highlight that all the three measures are associated with a negative view of the social environment characterized by a lack of confidence in public institutions (health system, government), public roles and other people. Findings are discussed on the one hand to shed light on the role of deep-rooted cultural views in defining personal evaluations of government measures and adherence capacity. On the other hand, we suggest that taking into account people’s meaning-making can guide public health officials and policy makers to comprehend what favors or hinders adaptive responses to emergencies or social crises

Safety at high altitude: the importance of emotional dysregulation on pilots’ risk attitudes during flight

IntroductionAviation psychology is very interested in understanding how personological and psychological variables influence flight performances. Indeed, risk attitudes have been considered as a risk factor for aviation accidents. In this context, emotions and coping style are key variables which could influence concentration by affecting cognition and attention. In addition, the specific training backgrounds seemed to be associated with differences in in-flight accident rates. The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between age, sex, flight experience, emotional dysregulation, coping styles, flight licenses, and pilots’ risk attitudes.MethodsEighty pilots completed an online survey composed of ad hoc questionnaire for sociodemographic and work-related information’s and self-report questionnaires that assessed emotional dysregulation, coping styles, and risk attitudes.ResultsResults showed that older age and emotional dysregulation were associated with higher risk attitudes in pilots. Moreover, emotional dysregulation seemed to promote worse self-confidence. Ultralight pilots appeared to be more risk-oriented and less self-confident than civil pilots, while more flight experience appeared to favorite greater self-confidence.DiscussionIn conclusion, the study suggests the importance of promoting interventions based on sharing pilots’ difficulties and emotions and promoting safe attitudes with special attention to ultralight pilots, age, and sex differences

How socio-institutional contexts and cultural worldviews relate to COVID-19 acceptance rates: A representative study in Italy

Rationale Despite its importance to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination has raised hesitation in large segments of the population. This hesitation makes it important to understand the mechanisms underlying vaccine acceptance. To this end, the study adopts the Semiotic Cultural Psychology Theory, holding that social behaviors – and therefore, vaccination acceptance – depend on the cultural meanings in terms of which people interpret the social world. Objective The study aims at estimating the impact a) of the way people interpret the socio-institutional context of the pandemic and b) of the underlying cultural worldviews on vaccine acceptance. More particularly, the study tested the three following hypotheses. a) The meanings grounding the interpretation of the socio-institutional framework – that is, trust in institutions and political values – are an antecedent of vaccination acceptance. b) The impact of these meanings is moderated by the cultural worldviews (operationalized as symbolic universes). And c), the magnitude of the symbolic universes’ moderator effect depends on the uncertainty to which the respondent is exposed. The exposure to uncertainty was estimated in terms of socioeconomic status – the lower the status, the high the exposure to uncertainty. Methods An Italian representative sample (N = 3020) completed a questionnaire, measuring vaccination acceptance, the meanings attributed to the socio-institutional context – that is, political values and trust in institutions – and symbolic universes. Results The findings were consistent with the hypotheses. a) Structural equation modelling proved that vaccine acceptance was predicted by trust in institutions. b) Multigroup analysis revealed that symbolic universes moderated the correlation between trust in institutions and vaccine acceptance. And c), the moderation effect of symbolic universes proved to occur only in the segment of lower socio-economic status (i.e., the group exposed to higher uncertainty). Conclusions Vaccination acceptance is not only a medical issue; it is also dependent upon the rationalization of the socio-institutional context. Implications for the promotion of vaccination acceptance are discussed

VOTE_12_10_2022_Supplementary material_REV15.5.23

Supplementary materia

Hubert J.M. Hermans, Rob Bartels. Citizenship Education and the Personalization of Democracy. Routledge. 2021. 220~pp. Paperback. {ISBN} 9,780,367,467,890

Citizenship education is a topic of great relevance in a historical period characterized by a strong change in social morphology. There is a shared awareness of the need to cross strict national borders in order to promote a broader sense of citizenship conceived in terms of globality. Hubert Hermans and Rob Bartels in the book Citizenship Education and the Personalization of Democracy, designed for undergraduate and graduate levels in higher education, support these goals by adding a psychological dimension based on the theory of the Dialogical Self. The authors aim to promote not only critical thinking in general, but also self-critical thinking, inviting students to examine the ways they relate to themselves. The book also underlines the personal and social responsibilities that everyone has as a citizen of a wider global community, that of the whole world, which must be preserved and respected from an ecological point of view. For this reason there is a need to develop "ecological identities" aware of being an integral and active part of the planet Earth. The book achieves these objectives through critical information on basic democratic principles, but mainly through the promotion of the personalization of democracy, through the exploration of students' life experiences

Ofer Grosbard, Babel: A Guide to the East–West Encounter

In the scientific community, the constructs of Individualism and Collectivism arouse particular interest, so that the amount of literature produced is large and diverse. Many authors contributed to the development of the construct both in terms of theoretical validity and on measurement techniques and tools. Ofer Grosbard's book Babel-A Guide to the East-West Encounter is an example of this trend. Starting from the proposal of new principles characterizing the two different paradigms of thought (Eastern-Collectivist, Western-Individualist), the author coined the term Thinking Vector which can be oriented externally or internally depending on the individual's mode of thinking. The author also proposes a questionnaire for measuring the Thinking Vector and suggestions for an optimal encounter between individuals with different paradigms of the mind. The book offers the opportunity to reflect on the explanatory significance of the constructs of Individualism and Collectivism on both a theoretical and methodological level

I discorsi di odio come costruzione di senso. Note per una politica di promozione delle competenze semiopoietiche = Hate speech as a construction of meaning. Notes for a policy of promoting semio-poietic skills

Hate speech is one of the critical phenomena that characterize contemporary societies. In the first part of this work, a conceptual framework is proposed, in line with the uncertainty-affectivization model: that is, how social actors make sense of their experience under conditions of contextual uncertainty. According to this conceptual framework, the affective activation acts as a semiotic organizer and restores the subject's sensemaking destabilized by the uncertainty. In the final part of the paper, an intervention scenario is outlined, which proposes to consider tertiary settings as the hub of development of sense-making dynamics capable to generate innovative meanings to those produced through the affective activation

Psycho-social determinants of racism: from psychoanalysis and social psychology to a new interpretative approach

Racism is a critical phenomenon that continues to pervasively plague contemporary society. There are many factors underlying the manifestations of hatred and discrimination. In this article, we decided to focus on the role played by psycho-social factors in the onset and maintenance of these problematic phenomena. The first part focused on the contribution of psychoanalysis, in understanding racism from the perspective of the unconscious mechanisms that perpetrate its expression. The second part sees the contribution of social psychology and of the theories about intergroup relations. The last part sees the contribution of the semiotic approach to cultural psychology, which offers an alternative framework capable of addressing the specific object of racism from a different and innovative angle; namely, that according to which this problem is determined by specific cultural models which influence how the individual attributes meanings to the signs of the world

Verso un turismo del paesaggio rurale: il progetto Paesaggi Italiani.

Abstract Coltivare, trasformare, conservare, presidiare, ospitare. Produrre beni, servizi, persino energia (rigorosamente rinnovabile). Dall’alba del terzo millennio l’agricoltura è il settore economico che ha più saputo rinnovarsi. Cancellare lo stereotipo di un settore tradizionale e isolato dentro un mondo che cambia. Non solo modificando mezzi e metodi di produzione, ma ripensando alla propria stessa funzione. Nell’ultimo decennio, gli imprenditori agricoli italiani hanno interpretato questo nuovo impegno, mantenendo viva un’economia rurale che oggi fa perno su attività come la vendita diretta, la filiera corta, l’ospitalità rurale e l’agriturismo. Nuove occupazioni che hanno arricchito il “mestiere” di agricoltore, consentendogli di instaurare una nuova rete di relazioni che stanno invertendo il flusso di risorse e di persone tra città e campagna. È proprio partendo da questi presupposti, che lo sviluppo di un “quarto polo” del turismo italiano, il cosiddetto Turismo del paesaggio rurale, prende forma attraverso il progetto “PAESAGGI ITALIANI”, in cui, accanto alle tre consolidate offerte turistiche nazionali (“mare”, “monti” e “città d’arte”), individua un equilibrio diverso tra risorse e consumi nelle aree rurali. Il “Turismo del Paesaggio rurale” introduce un’innovazione nella gamma delle offerte turistiche, propone i territori come “condizione dello spirito”, come “stati mentali” secondo i criteri dell’esperienza polisensoriale, emozionale e del rapporto umano. Può offrire un prodotto tipico come un’escursione o un itinerario, ma di questi offrirà (e promuoverà) l’unicità dell’esperienza, non semplicemente la bontà del prodotto o dei servizi. La novità consiste nel fatto che quel tipo di offerta, organizzata in mete e pacchetti, è per la prima volta strutturata e promossa in quanto “paesaggio”, richiedendo pertanto un’innovazione tanto nella sua comunicazione, quanto nella sua fruizione. Tali attività hanno lo scopo di rendere questo quarto polo del turismo uno strumento per conferire valore e qualità alla produzione agricola, dando l’opportunità al settore di sperimentare nuove funzionalità produttive e di differenziare le entrate economiche. Ecco allora che la neo-agricoltura fa i conti con il post-turismo: il paesaggio italiano, modellato dalle attività rurali, diventa protagonista di una rinascita economica sostenibile. Il progetto Paesaggi Italiani, si inserisce nell’ambito degli studi dell’unità di ricerca “Governo e governance delle trasformazioni del paesaggio” ritrovando nei suoi due principali assi di interesse una piena collocazione. Paesaggi Italiani infatti, mirando a sviluppare un “quarto polo” del turismo italiano, il cosiddetto Turismo del paesaggio rurale, ponendosi come obiettivo generale quello di promuovere e mettere in rete le aree rurali italiane sotto l’aspetto del patrimonio culturale e ambientale e dei prodotti tipici, e incentivandone la fruizione turistica, da una parte, pone attenzione alle modalità con cui si possono supportare processi istituzionali legati alle trasformazioni del paesaggio e, dall’altra, a quei processi che hanno a che fare con il sistema di valori di ciascun individuo, con le sue preferenze, con la sua percezione di gradevolezza e benessere