Psychometric Properties of the Italian Version of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire

Two studies were conducted in order to investigate the psychometric properties of Italian version of the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ). Results from Study 1 (N = 401) provided support of the factorial validity of its four facets (self‐efficacy, optimism, hope, and resilience), as well as of its composite factor measure. Results from Study 2 (N = 465) attested the measurement invariance of the PCQ across one year. Study 2 also explored the relationship between psychological capital, job satisfaction, work engagement, and job performance. Limitations and practical implications are discussed in the article.     

When Training Becomes Incentive for Generative Living and Working Together in Organizations

This article has come about from two considerations: on one hand, living together in a work environment is becoming more and more challenging; on the other, training professionals at work represents a used and relevant action incentive in order to support and improve individual, group, and organizational development. In light of the fact that organizations are asking more and more complex questions, this work aims at developing a reflection on how adopting a certain perspective and educational method is particularly suitable to support the organization to achieve substantial outcomes, such as developing generative living and working together in organizations. In this article, we will analyze two illustrative cases, underlining evolution and learning process with a particular focus on the consequences of living and working together in organizations.     

Generalization of visual regularities in newly hatched chicks (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Gallus gallus</Emphasis>)

Evidence of learning and generalization of visual regularities in a newborn organism is provided in the present research. Domestic chicks have been trained to discriminate visual triplets of simultaneously presented shapes, implementing AAB versus ABA (Experiment 1), AAB versus ABB and AAB versus BAA (Experiment 2). Chicks distinguished pattern-following and pattern-violating novel test triplets in all comparisons, showing no preference for repetition-based patterns. The animals generalized to novel instances even when the patterns compared were not discriminable by the presence or absence of reduplicated elements or by symmetry (e.g., AAB vs. ABB). These findings represent the first evidence of learning and generalization of regularities at the onset of life in an animal model, revealing intriguing differences with respect to human newborns and infants. Extensive prior experience seems to be unnecessary to drive the process, suggesting that chicks are predisposed to detect patterns characterizing the visual world.     

Engagement in the university context: exploring the role of a sense of justice and social identification

The aim of this study was to investigate how a sense of justice, university identification and student engagement emerge within the educational context and the reciprocal relationships among these constructs. Two correlational studies were conducted: (1) a pilot study aimed at validating the constructs of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional aspects), social identification and student engagement (rule-abiding and extra-role aspects), within the university context (N \(=\) 280); (2) a study exploring the robustness of and the relationships between those constructs (N \(=\) 429). The results confirmed the presence of a four-factor solution involving a sense of overall justice (comprising distributive, procedural and interactional aspects), social identification, and two types of student engagement (rule-abiding and extra-role behaviours). A sense of justice was found to be related to students’ rule-abiding behaviour and, at the same time, it was related to students’ extra-role behaviour, only for closely identified students. In other words, student identification with the university moderated the relationship between sense of justice and extra-role behaviours. Our results showed the important role of sense justice in promoting student engagement (in both aspects of rule-abiding and extra-role behaviour), providing useful insights for the management of the university level educational system towards a better involvement of students in the attainment of higher academic performances and institutional commitment.     

Impaired configural body processing in anorexia nervosa: Evidence from the body inversion effect

Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) suffer from severe disturbances of body perception. It is unclear, however, whether such disturbances are linked to specific alterations in the processing of body configurations with respect to the local processing of body part details. Here, we compared a consecutive sample of 12 AN patients with a group of 12 age‐, gender‐ and education‐matched controls using an inversion effect paradigm requiring the visual discrimination of upright and inverted pictures of whole bodies, faces and objects. The AN patients presented selective deficits in the discrimination of upright body stimuli, which requires configural processing. Conversely, patients and controls showed comparable abilities in the discrimination of inverted bodies, which involves only detail‐based processing, and in the discrimination of both upright and inverted faces and objects. Importantly, the body inversion effect negatively correlated with the persistence scores at the Temperament and Character Inventory, which evaluates increased tendency to convert a signal of punishment into a signal of reinforcement. These results suggest that the deficits of configural processing in AN patients may be associated with their obsessive worries about body appearance and to the excessive attention to details that characterizes their general perceptual style.     

Connecting Personal History and Organizational Context: Suggestions for Developing Educational Programs for Youth Soccer Coaches

Literature underscores the complex role of coaches in sport organizations, especially in youth sectors. Their need for support, not only on the technical level, is emerging. In recent years an interesting international debate has evolved regarding what education is most suitable to support coach development. The article intends to enter this debate by proposing an educational model for youth soccer coaches. This educational proposal is the outcome of reflection that originated from various experiences with about 110 Italian youth soccer coaches over the past six years. The first part is dedicated to a review of the literature on coaching education, and the second to the educational model presented (e.g., theoretical background, characteristics, setting, outcomes, and considerations regarding the management of this educational process). The strength of this model was precisely to have put some recurrent issues in dialogue with the specific organizational contexts in which the educational programs were implemented.     

Effects of a REBT Based Training on Children and Teachers in Primary School

Rational Emotive Education (REE) is a psychological educational program offering a preventative psycho-educational curriculum to children in order to teach them emotional literacy skills. REE helps children by teaching them to challenge irrational thinking, to minimize their reactions to disappointment and frustrations, to cope more effectively with problems, and to more fully accept themselves. The efficacy of REE training for children and teachers was examined in a sample of 211 third grade students from nine different classes and 26 teachers. Each class was randomly assigned to one of three different groups, two experimental groups and a control group, each receiving different training. First objective of our study was to evaluate the efficacy of a REE training based on storytelling in changing children’s irrational beliefs. Second objective of our study was to observe the efficacy of a teachers’ training similar to that applied in REBT-focused school consultation groups in enhancing their self-efficacy. Results show an improved tendency in children to think rationally and an enhanced perception of self-efficacy in teachers for those groups that underwent the training compared to the control group. Our results suggest that REBT based trainings for children and teachers should be integrated into the classroom curriculum in order to prevent mental health problems and encourage positive social and emotional well-being.     

A Cross-cultural Study of Biological,Psychological, and Social Antecedents of Self-objectification in Italy and Romania

Although there is extensive documentation of the damaging psychological consequences of self-objectification, more research is needed to explain its antecedents. With the present study we (a) investigated the correlates of self-objectification by analyzing biological (age and body-mass index), psychological (self-esteem), and sociocultural dimensions (influence of mass media and significant others) in women and men; (b) examined the role of culture in self-objectification processes; and (c) tested the effect of gender as a moderator in the relationship between both psychological and sociocultural dimensions and self-objectification. A total of 770 heterosexual adults residing in Italy and Romania completed a self-reported questionnaire. Self-objectification was operationalized as Body Surveillance (BS) and Body Shame (BSH); however, because the the BS subscale was not satisfactorily reliable, our focus was restricted to BSH. The correlates of self-objectification for BSH were analyzed separately by nationality in regression models. Overall, BSH emerged as a process influenced by agents rooted in biological and psychological domains, as well as in social and cultural domains. High educational level and high self-esteem (this last particularly in men) correlated with reduced body shame for the Romanian sample, whereas within the Italian sample, the internalization of media standards and influence of significant others emerged as risk factors for body shame. Taken together, these findings underline the need to identify cross-cultural constants of self-objectification, as well as differences across contexts, in order to better understand self-objectification and to promote protective factors in specific culturally situated interventions.