Marinella Paciello

Positivity, defined as the tendency to view life and experiences with a positive outlook, has recently received a great deal of interest for its significance in understanding human strengths and well-being, yet the temporal interplay among its three facets (self-esteem, life satisfaction, optimism) in relation to the construct of positivity itself is still unclear. A three-wave study of 1,375 Spanish university students investigated this interplay before, during, and after the first COVID-19 lockdown. A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model separated trait-like from state-like variance in each facet and extracted latent shared components, to explore the extent to which positivity subsumes or coexists with these dimensions of human strengths and their relationships across time. The trait-like positivity factor loaded strongly on the between-person components of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism, suggesting a pervasive influence on these facets at the between-person level. A state-like positivity factor accounted for their concurrent dynamic fluctuations, but did not fully account for the within-person variance of each facet, showing its distinctiveness from these constructs and the uniqueness of each. Moreover, both trait-like and state-like positivity and within-person residuals of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism were significantly associated with subjective mental health perception. These findings contribute to the understanding of positivity as a construct encompassing a stable trait-like disposition and state-like specific components arising from self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism without subsuming them, highlighting its role as an expression of the self-system with an important function in well-being and adaptive functioning.

The present study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the attitude–behavior link in the sphere of environmental issues by taking into account the role of moral disengagement. Pro-environmental attitudes, at both the implicit and explicit levels, were considered under the hypothesis that they may have direct and indirect effects on pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) through moral disengagement. The hypothesized relationships specified in the mediation model were tested by administering a cross-sectional online survey to a convenience sample of adult students enrolled in a digital university (N = 176; M_age = 40.54, SD_age = 14) via Millisecond Inquisit Web. The assessment included instruments measuring environmental moral disengagement and explicit attitudes toward the adoption of PEBs, together with an ad hoc Implicit Association Test designed to capture implicit attitudes toward sustainability, and the use of a pro-environmental behavior rating scale. While the sensitivity to model misfit was limited given the achieved sample size, the results from the path analysis show that implicit attitudes do not have a direct effect on PEBs, while explicit attitudes directly influence them. Moreover, as positive explicit and implicit pro-environmental and sustainability attitudes increase, moral disengagement decreases, which in turn negatively affects PEBs. Overall, the present findings confirm that moral disengagement plays a mediating role, and that attitudes can be targets for potential interventions aimed at promoting pro-environmental behaviors and addressing justificatory mechanisms that hinder their adoption.

Despite the consequences of ethnic moral disengagement, such as ethnic bullying, racism, and prejudice, a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively counter it remains an ongoing area of research. The present study proposes an association between ethnic moral disengagement and three individual dimensions: the executive function of inhibitory control, a reflective cognitive style, and personal values that reflect growth-oriented motivations in contrast to self-defensive ones. By evaluating these dimensions respectively through a behavioral task, a cognitive measure, and a self-report instrument, the aim is to understand the role of basic behavioral capability, cognitive reflection, and growth-oriented values in reducing ethnic moral disengagement. The study, conducted on 413 participants (243 female, M = 19.60 years, SD = 1.46) using a structural equation modeling approach, found that while inhibitory control was not significantly linked to ethnic moral disengagement, reflective information processing and broader value horizons may constitute a key resource for opposing it. Overall, these results suggest that individuals who adopt such a reflective and growth-oriented mindset may elaborate differences and unfamiliar encounters as opportunities rather than as threats to be defended against by justifying themselves and externally displacing responsibility for their decisions and actions.

Intergroup contact interventions have been mostly used to foster empathy, promote positive relations, and reduce prejudice and discrimination. However, less is known about the potential of intergroup contact, especially digital, in interventions designed to hinder hate speech and promote counter‐speech. Counter‐speech can be defined as a direct response to hate speech, aimed at refuting or undermining it. This study argues that the quality of intergroup contact may foster counter‐speech responses through empathy for hate speech victims. For this purpose, an ad hoc conversational storytelling web‐app module, named “Let's Make the Difference!”, was developed and administered to a sample of 433 Italian adolescents (278 in the experimental group and 155 in the control group, M_age = 14.33). Through the web‐app, adolescents engaged in a chat with an outgroup avatar, inducing digital intergroup contact. Results show a significant increase in counter‐speech intentions between the pre‐test and post‐test in the experimental condition, unlike in the control group. Moreover, in line with our hypotheses, the quality of contact induced with the conversational agent increased empathy toward the victim, which in turn increased the intention to counter hate speech in the intervention group. In light of these results on digital contact, both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Stereotypes have been studied extensively in the fields of social psychology and, especially with the recent advances in technology, in computational linguistics. Stereotypes have also gained even more attention nowadays because of a notable rise in their dissemination due to demographic changes and world events. This paper focuses on ethnic stereotypes related to immigration and presents the StereoHoax corpus, a multilingual dataset of 17,814 tweets in French, Italian, and Spanish. The corpus includes conversational threads reporting on and responding to racial hoaxes about immigrants, which we define as false claims of unlawful actions attributed to specific ethnic groups. This work describes the data collection process and the fine-grained annotation scheme we used, which is based mainly on the Stereotype Content Model adapted to the study applied to immigrants of Bosco et al. (2023). Quantitative and qualitative analyses show the distribution and correlation of annotated categories across languages, revealing, for instance, intercultural differences in the expression of stereotypes through forms of discredit. To validate our data, we performed four machine learning experiments using pre-trained BERT-like models in order to lay a foundation for automatic stereotype detection research. Leveraging the StereoHoax corpus, we gained crucial insights into the importance of context, especially in relation to the detection of implicit stereotypes. Overall, we believe that the StereoHoax corpus will prove to be a valuable resource for the automatic detection of stereotypes regarding immigrants and the study of the linguistic and psychological patterns associated with their dissemination.

Moral self‐efficacy refers to individuals' beliefs in their capability to effectively mobilise motivation, cognitive resources and strategic actions to achieve moral performance particularly in challenging situations. We adopt the conceptualization of moral self‐efficacy that encompasses both self‐reflective and behavioural components. The self‐reflective dimension pertains to one's perceived capability to reflect on past moral lapses, while the behavioural dimension involves one's perceived capability to regulate future moral conduct. The study aims to explore moral self‐efficacy as a “dynamic” process unfolding over time, focusing on the reciprocal influence between its self‐reflective and behavioural dimensions in hindering the development of moral disengagement. Utilising a three‐wave design with a sample of 1308 employees (50% females) at Time 1 results of a structural equation model support the hypothesized interplay between self‐reflective and behavioural moral self‐efficacy over time. In addition, our findings partly support our hypothesized relationships between moral self‐efficacy dimensions and moral disengagement: self‐reflective moral self‐efficacy directly and negatively influenced the development of moral disengagement over time, while behavioural moral self‐efficacy negative influenced it only indirectly through self‐reflective moral self‐efficacy.

Literature on the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional (ICU) traits has suggested different versions of the instrument for assessing these traits during development. However, consensus on the instrument version and the best factorial solution remains a matter of debate, with only a few studies having validated ICU versions from a longitudinal perspective. The current study aims to contribute to the literature by comparing ICU models in a longitudinal sample of early adolescents (N = 739; 70.6% of eligible subjects, 371 females and 368 males, in the 6th grade at baseline assessment and in the 8th grade at the second assessment). We tested the validity of various versions of the ICU scales and their respective dimensions by conducting a series of confirmatory factor analyses to verify the factor structure, alongside assessments of internal consistency. For the best-fitting structure, we then analyzed gender and longitudinal invariance in addition to construct and predictive validity, using internalizing and externalizing criteria as well as prosocial behavior. From the comparative analysis, it emerged that the abbreviated 11-item ICU scale version displayed overall better data fit than the full 24-item version. Moreover, its confirmed gender invariance underscores its applicability across genders within the studied age group. With regard to longitudinal invariance, our findings advise caution when comparing ICU scores across early adolescence. Practical implications are discussed.