Personalizing politics: a congruency model of political preference

Modern politics become personalized as individual characteristics of voters and candidates assume greater importance in political discourse. Although personalities of candidates capture center stage and become the focus of voters' preferences, individual characteristics of voters, such as their traits and values, become decisive for political choice. The authors' findings reveal that people vote for candidates whose personality traits are in accordance with the ideology of their preferred political party. They also select politicians whose traits match their own traits. Moreover, voters' traits match their own values. The authors outline a congruency model of political preference that highlights the interacting congruencies among voters' self-reported traits and values, voters' perceptions of leaders' personalities, politicians' self-reported traits, and programs of favored political coalitions.     

Self-efficacy pathways to childhood depression

This prospective research analyzed how different facets of perceived self-efficacy operate in concert within a network of sociocognitive influences in childhood depression. Perceived social and academic inefficacy contributed to concurrent and subsequent depression both directly and through their impact on academic achievement, prosocialness, and problem behaviors. In the shorter run, children were depressed over beliefs in their academic inefficacy rather than over their actual academic performances. In the longer run, the impact of a low sense of academic efficacy on depression was mediated through academic achievement, problem behavior, and prior depression. Perceived social inefficacy had a heavier impact on depression in girls than in boys in the longer term. Depression was also more strongly linked over time for girls than for boys.     

The eliciting cue value of aggressive slides reconsidered in a personological perspective: The weapons effect and irritability

A study was conducted, according to a 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 design and using the Buss aggression machine paradigm, to investigate the aggression-eliciting properties of slides of firearms. One hundred and twenty highly irritable and 120 low irritable subjects, equally divided between males and females, were given the opportunity to deliver electric shocks to an experimental confederate after having been randomly assigned to one of the six different conditions resulting from presence versus absence of previous instigation to aggress and from exposure to aggressive slides versus exposure to non-aggressive slides versus non-exposure to slides. It was found that aggressive cues, were sufficient per se to increase subsequent aggressive behaviours in observers, whether or not previously instigated to aggress. While sex differences did not seem to play any relevant role, the importance of irritability was stressed, especially where exposure to aggressive slides followed a previous instigation to aggress.     

Understanding the Complexity of Human Aggression: Affective,Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Individual Differences in Propensity Toward Aggression

Human aggression is a complex phenomenon operating at multiple levels. Converging evidence distinguishes ‘hot’ aggression, impulsive and emotionally-centered, from ‘cool’ aggression, cognitively based and instrumental. The correspondence of these aggressive response patterns with individual differences in Propensity toward Aggression was investigated. Our data (from 477 Italian adults) map ten of these aggression indicators into the personality space defined by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality. The quadrant containing most of these variables is defined by Emotional Instability (the negative pole of Emotional Stability) and Hostility (the negative pole of Friendliness). Factor analysis uncovered two factors that accounted for nearly 60 percent of the variance in Propensity toward Aggression: Emotional Responsivity and Positive Evaluation of Violence. Practical implications for issues of health and disease, violence, and interventions for different forms of adults' and children's aggression are outlined.     

Sociocognitive self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive behavior

This longitudinal research examined a structural model of the self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive conduct. Perceived academic and self-regulatory efficacy concurrently and longitudinally deterred transgressiveness both directly and by fostering prosocialness and adherence to moral self-sanctions for harmful conduct. The impact of perceived social self-efficacy was mediated through prosocialness. Moral disengagement and prosocialness affected transgressiveness through the mediating influence of irascible affectivity and hostile rumination. Ruminative affectivity, in turn, both concurrently and longitudinally affected transgressiveness. Moral disengagement also contributed independently to variance in transgressiveness over time. This pattern of relations was obtained after controlling for prior transgressiveness. The structural model was replicated across gender and provided a better fit to the data than did several alternative models.     

When Likeness Goes with Liking: The Case of Political Preference

Three studies show that people tend to vote for politicians (i.e., either Romano Prodi or Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or George W. Bush or John Kerry in the United States) whose traits they rate as being most similar to their own. People perceived higher similarity between themselves and political figures with respect to traits that were most distinctive of each platform and their respective leaders. These findings, while corroborating the similarity-attraction relationship, further attest to the role that personal characteristics of both voters and candidates play in orienting political preference.     

Investigation of age and gender effects on positive orientation in Italian twins

We investigated age and gender effects on “Positive Orientation” (POS)—an individual's tendency to view life with a positive outlook—using a genetically informed design. Study subjects were 1016 twins aged 22–75 from the Italian twin registry. We assessed POS by the recently developed P‐scale. First, we used confirmatory factor analysis to investigate scale's measurement invariance by age and gender. Then, we applied biometric modelling to estimate genetic and environmental components of POS score. Overall, we found a satisfactory degree of measurement invariance by both age and gender. Results from these analyses further indicated an increasing mean level of POS across the lifespan. Additive genetic and unshared environmental factors explained respectively 58% and 42% of variance in POS score, with no significant gender differences; furthermore, the pattern of change of gene‐environment architecture of POS over time was consistent with a greater plasticity of personality at older ages.     

The Relation of Pro‐Sociality to Self‐Esteem: The Mediational Role of Quality of Friendships

The present longitudinal study examined the role of quality of friendship in mediating the relation of pro‐sociality to self‐esteem over time. Participants were 424 Italian young adults (56% females) assessed at two waves (M_age = 21.1 at Time 1; M_age = 25 at Time 2). An autoregressive cross‐lagged panel model was used to test the mediational model. Self‐ and friend‐report measures of pro‐sociality, quality of friendship, and self‐esteem were included in the analyses. Results were in line with the hypothesized paths, with quality of friendship mediating the relation of pro‐sociality to later self‐esteem above and beyond its high stability. Self‐esteem, in turn, predicted pro‐sociality 4 years later. Overall, the present findings support the potential benefits of behaving pro‐socially for an actor in terms of increased perceived self‐worth and also expand previous work by outlining the specific mediational role of the quality of friendships. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Being positive despite illness: The contribution of positivity to the quality of life of cancer patients

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between Positivity (POS), defined as a stable disposition to view at experience under a positive outlook, and physical and psychological functioning in a sample of cancer patients immediately after diagnosis and one year later.

Methods: A total of 110 patients (40% males) with pulmonary, colorectal and breast cancer, aged 30–75 (M age = 59.62; SD = 10.33), have been prospectively enrolled between 2012 and 2013, at the S. Andrea Hospital in Rome. All patients were previously aware of their diagnosis. A follow-up one year after diagnosis was conducted. We used structural equation modeling in order to analyse the specific effects of POS on functioning impairment from diagnosis to follow up.

Results: POS was associated with less functioning impairment both at diagnosis and follow-up assessments. Furthermore, POS level at diagnosis continued to be associated with less functioning impairment one year later, after controlling for its stability.

Conclusions: Patients with higher level of POS tended to report less symptoms associated with negative affect such as anxiety and despondency and to preserve their habitual relationships and social roles. POS may act as a basic disposition that sustains patients’ efforts to deal efficaciously with severe illness, by complying with medical treatment and using cognitive strategies that enable individuals to cope with concurrent and prospective challenges of illness.