Maria Giuseppina Pacilli

Understanding how individuals integrate their work and non-work identities has become a central concern in research analyzing individual differences in the work context. In particular, gender-work identity integration (GWII) has been proven to significantly impact employee well-being and work adjustment. We present two studies designed to improve GWII by gender-fair language use at work. In Study 1 ( N =  1024), employees of a telecommunication company, after completing a pre-test, received instructions to use either double gender-marking language (DGML, N =  355) or gender-neutral language (GNL, N =  310) in written communication. A third control group ( N =  359) did not receive any instructions. Results show that use of DGML improved employees’ GWII over time, which, in turn, also increased their work engagement and well-being. Study 2 ( N =  219) replicated findings from Study 1 showing that change in DGML use improves GWII, but only under low levels of observed sexist behaviors in the organization. Together, these findings provide evidence of the impact of organizational language policies on employees’ identity processes and well-being.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a worldwide public health issue. While most research has focused on victims’ experiences and the consequences of physical and sexual IPV, less is known about how laypeople perceive and interpret episodes of IPV, particularly economic abuse, or how these perceptions shape their responses, such as moral evaluations, victim-blaming, helping behavior, and support for collective action. We address this gap by applying the bystander approach to examine the factors that influence social evaluation of economic abuse, including the role of contextual information about the victim, and specifically to investigate reactions, such as hiding financial information, to economic abuse. In Study 1 (correlational, N = 204) participants read a fictitious newspaper article in which a woman was verbally assaulted by her husband after he discovered she had secretly saved money in a separate bank account. We provided preliminary evidence that the less people represented economic abuse as a form of violence, the more likely they were to perceive the victim as immoral and blame her: Consequently, they were less inclined to help and support her and to engage in collective action to tackle the IPV more generally. In Study 2 (experimental, N = 274), participants who read that the victim saved money for self-oriented (vs. family-oriented) motivation evaluated her as less moral, blamed her, and were less inclined to help her and to engage in collective action. In Study 3 (experimental, N = 376), participants who read that the victim saved money as a reaction to previous economic abuse evaluated the victim as more moral, and as a consequence they blamed her to a less extent, and were more inclined to help and support her and to engage in collective action. We discuss potential implications for IPV policies and campaigns, which often overlook economic abuse and how moral biases shape public reactions.

The present research examines laypeople's social perception of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). We explored how women's moral judgments of a female IPV victim impact psychological and social distancing. Across two experiments, participants read a scenario where the victim admitted or denied infidelity. When she admitted betrayal, participants judged her as less moral, leading to psychologically distance themselves from the victim by judging her as less prototypical of the women as a group and to keep her at a distance. Findings highlight the role of moral evaluations in shaping IPV perceptions, offering insights for educational campaigns addressing victim blaming.

The present study examines the role of cultural factors in the perceptions of victims of sextortion (the abuse of power to obtain sexual benefits) by comparing participants from a culture of honor (Italy) and a culture of dignity (the U.K.) and by measuring individual-level honor endorsement. A sample of 452 participants were asked to read a fictitious scenario describing a woman target of sextortion. The research employed a 2 × 2 between-participants design: The victim was described either as caving into sextortion for familial reasons (i.e., for her sick child) versus for personal reasons and as exhibiting high versus low levels of sexual modesty. The results revealed that overall Italian participants felt stronger moral outrage towards the victim, perceived her as less moral, and attributed more blame to her than did British participants. Additionally, when the victim was described as caving into sextortion for personal reasons, both groups rated her as less moral compared to when she was described as doing so for familial reasons. Furthermore, participants found the victim marginally more blameworthy when she was described as adhering closely to feminine honor values. An exploratory moderation analysis indicated that stronger endorsement of feminine and family honor values was associated with increased blame towards the victim; these associations were more pronounced in the Italian than in the British sample. These findings underscore the potential role of cultural factors in the perception of sextortion victims and highlight the importance of developing culturally tailored awareness strategies to address victim blaming, especially in honor-oriented societies.

Sextortion is a scantly investigated crime in which entrusted authority is abused to obtain sex in exchange for a service or benefit. Based on the literature on gender violence, in the present research, we examined the role of moral evaluations of the victims in predicting potential bystanders’ attitudes and behavioural intentions towards a woman who is a victim of a sextortion incident. In three experimental studies conducted with Italian participants (Study 1: n = 291; Study 2: n = 288; Study 3: n = 331), participants read a scenario describing a woman victim of sextortion and then rated the victim on moral outrage, moral evaluation, blame attribution, perceived reputational damage, and indicated their willingness to help her. The results highlighted that the victim was always perceived as less moral and more blameworthy when she caved into sextortion (vs. not). Furthermore, a sequential mediation model showed that, across all studies, caving into (vs. resisting) sextortion elicited stronger feelings of moral outrage towards the victim, as well as the perception of lower morality, which, in turn, reduced the willingness to offer help. In Study 3, this pattern was significant only when the woman reported the incident 1 year later (vs. 1 week). Current findings show that the peculiar transactional nature of sexual abuse makes sextortion victims appear to be complicit in the act. Thus, recognising the power dynamics through which sextortion can be used to exploit and abuse individuals is paramount to avoid secondary victimisation.

Image-based sexual abuse represents an increasingly common form of gender-based violence, consisting of the act of non-consensually capturing, distributing, or threatening to distribute sexually explicit material depicting another person. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how women victims’ noncompliance with traditional female sexuality influences bystanders’ perceptions of the phenomenon. Specifically, we experimentally examined whether a woman’s sexual agency (high vs. low) and the length (steady vs. transient) of the relationship with the perpetrator affected her moral evaluation, victim blaming, and participants’ willingness to support her. A sample of 597 adults (65.7% women, M_age = 31.29 years) took part in the study. The findings indicated that while a transient (vs. steady) relationship with the perpetrator significantly lowered the woman’s perceived moral virtue and increased the extent to which she was blamed for the incident, a high (vs. low) woman’s sexual agency decreased participants’ helping intentions towards her. Additionally, results showed that men were less likely than women to attribute moral virtue and help the victim. Lastly, through the mediation of moral virtue and victim blaming, the length of the relationship indirectly influenced participants’ helping intentions.

Social media use occupies a prominent space in social sciences scholarship and beyond. However, the distinction between active and passive use of social media, although important in explaining a variety of users’ behaviours, has been overlooked in terms of its potential to predict key socially relevant outcomes like beliefs in conspiracy theories. In three studies (N = 1388, in total), we provide evidence on (a) the role of passive social media use in believing in conspiracy theories via personal relative deprivation; (b) the interaction effect between social media use and personal relative deprivation on beliefs in conspiracy theories. The results showed that passive social media use is linked to, and increases, beliefs in conspiracy theories and this relationship is partially mediated via increased personal relative deprivation (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 3, personal relative deprivation was also manipulated experimentally in the context of a ʻmoderation‐of‐process' design, yielding a significant interaction with social media use. The results are discussed in the light of their social and media psychological contribution and implications in the digital era, when misinformation often becomes prevalent.