Improving Intergroup Relations with Extended Contact among Young Children: Mediation by Intergroup Empathy and Moderation by Direct Intergroup Contact

A correlational study investigated extended contact as a strategy to improve outgroup attitudes and stereotyping and to prepare children for future contact. Additional aims were to investigate when and why the effects of extended contact occur. In particular, intergroup empathy was tested as a mediator and direct contact (i.e. cross‐group friendship) as a moderator of extended contact. Participants were Italian and immigrant elementary school children. Results showed that extended contact was associated with improved intergroup empathy, which, in turn, was associated with more positive outgroup attitudes, stereotypes and behavioural intentions. These effects were significant only among participants with a low or moderate level of direct contact. The theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Negative intergroup contact and support for social policies toward the minority outgroup in the aftermath of a natural disaster

In this field study, we tested whether negative intergroup contact experienced by majority (Italian) survivors in the aftermath of the earthquakes that struck Northern Italy in 2012 was associated with policy attitudes toward minority (immigrant) survivors. Results revealed a negative association between negative contact and support for social policies aimed at favoring immigrant survivors. Moreover, social policies toward immigrant survivors mediated the effect of negative contact on social policy attitudes toward the minority group as a whole. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of findings.     

Culture and teasing: the relational benefits of reduced desire for positive self-differentiation

The authors hypothesized that teasing, a social interaction that benefits relational bonds at the expense of the self, should be viewed as more affiliative, and experienced as more pleasurable, by members of cultures that deemphasize positive self-differentiation. In four multimethod studies, Asian Americans attributed more affiliative intent to teasers and reported more positive target experience than did European Americans. Teaser behavior, attribution biases, and personality did not account for culture-related differences in teasing experience. Rather, childhood teasing may better prepare Asian American children to overlook a tease's affront to the self in favor of its relational rewards. Implications of deemphasizing positive self-differentiation in social interaction are discussed.     

Workers' self‐objectification and tendencies to conform to others

Recent research showed that workers' self‐objectification—their self‐perception as objects rather than human beings—leads to detrimental intrapersonal consequences. In the present research, we explored whether this phenomenon may also affect interpersonal relations, by increasing workers' tendencies to conform. In a correlational study, Italian workers who perceived their work as more objectifying self‐objectified more—self‐attributed less human mental states and self‐perceive as more instrument‐like than human‐like—and, in turn, were more inclined to conform with others. The second study experimentally confirmed this pattern, showing that British workers who recalled an objectifying (vs. a non‐objectifying) work experience self‐objectified more. Self‐perception as instrument‐like was associated, in turn, with an increased tendency to adapt to others' opinions. The implications for organizational and social psychology are discussed.     

The contribution of agreeableness and self‐efficacy beliefs to prosociality

The present study examined how agreeableness and self‐efficacy beliefs about responding empathically to others' needs predict individuals' prosociality across time. Participants were 377 adolescents (66% males) aged 16 at Time 1 and 18 at Time 2 who took part at this study. Measures of agreeableness, empathic self‐efficacy and prosociality were collected at two time points. The findings corroborated the posited paths of relations to assigning agreeableness a major role in predicting the level of individuals' prosociality. Empathic self‐efficacy beliefs partially mediated the relation of agreeableness to prosociality. The posited conceptual model accounted for a significant portion of variance in prosociality and provides guidance with respect to interventions aimed at promoting prosociality. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Opicinus de Canistris: some notes from Jung's unpublished Eranos Seminar on the medieval Codex Palatinus Latinus 1993

Abstract: Jung held an informal seminar for a limited number of students after the end of the Eranos Conference in August, 1943. All traces of this seminar were lost until the notes taken on it by one of the students, Alwine von Keller, were found in 2006. Jung's talk consisted of a psychological commentary on a series of images in the medieval Codex Palatinus Latinus 1993, attributed to Opicinus de Canistris (1296‐c.1352), a fourteenth‐century Italian clergyman, mystic, miniaturist, and cartographer. Jung interpreted Opicinus’ images as a series of mandalas in which the Shadow, the dark principle, does not manage to be integrated into a balanced system. Opicinus tried to settle this division into opposites, which constitutes the main problem in modern times, while remaining inside the system of Christian doctrine. However, he did not succeed in his attempt to integrate the principle of the Shadow on the doctrinal level because he was not aware of the very same division in his own unconscious. Our article points out the features in the seminar where Jung seemed to show much more originality in his interpretation than other psychoanalytic studies on Opicinus or other analytical‐psychological readings of medieval Christian art.     

Aggressive content and related defenses in Rorschach responses of children ages 6–14

The aim of this study was to test the psychoanalytic notion that there is a gradual progression with age from primary to secondary process thinking. Three cohorts of children, age 6, 9, and 12, were administered the Rorschach procedure at yearly intervals—twice for the oldest cohort and three times for the two younger ones. No support was found for the developmental hypothesis in terms of aggressive content of the responses and the related defenses. The expectation of more aggressive content at earlier ages, as a reflection of more primitive aggressive drives, was not confirmed.     

The relationships between morningness-eveningness, ageing and personality

In an attempt to study the relationship between ageing and personality and the morningness-eveningness dimension two experiments were carried out. In experiment I, an Italian version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) was administered to 435 Ss ranging in age from 20 to 79 yr, and divided in to six age groups. In comparison with younger people older S tended to display greater Morningness-Eveningness scores. These results suggest that ageing relates to a shifting toward morningness. In Experiment II the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and the MEQ were administered to 233 Ss (20–29 yr). Morning-types had significantly higher N scores and tended to be insignificantly more introverted. Evening-types had significantly higher N scores and tended to be insignificantly more extraverted. The present findings are consistent with reports of a tendency for morning-types to be introverted and for evening-types extraverted. However, they do provide some evidence of individual differences on the neuroticism and psychoticism dimensions of personality between the two diurnal types.