RISULTATI RICERCA

The circadian typology is related to motivational, cognitive and behavioural aspects of personality. The morning types are described as introverts, conformists and sequential information processors. At the opposite, the evening types are extroverts, nonconformists and creative in solving problems. This study was aimed at assessing possible relationships between circadian typology and style of thought. Four-hundred and seventy-two university students (133 males and 339 females; mean age 22.16 ±s 3.07) were administered the shortened version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQr) and the questionnaire Your Style of Learning and Thinking (SOLAT). Results showed that evening types scored higher in the right thinking style scale, whereas the morning types in the left scale. Significant gender differences did not emerge. The different preferences in the cognitive styles of the cronotypes suggest different strategies of coping adopted in to face the environmental applications.

The aim of the present research is to explore the social representation of the third age and ageing. The study consists of two phases. The aim of the first phase was discover the elements linked to the concept of third age; the second aimed to explore the components such as information, attitude and representation field of ageing in women and men of two different age ranges, young (N=80) and elderly (N=53). Various instruments for data collection were used, such as free associations, life satisfaction (Life Satisfaction Index A by Neugarten, Havighurst and Tobin; Satisfaction With Life Scale by Diener, Emmons, Larsen and Griffin) and self-esteem scales (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale), as well as semantic differential scales. From the free associations results, processed through correspondence analysis, various social representations of ageing emerge. Among the present participants, they can be reduced mainly to age and gender differences, and only in part to different levels of satisfaction and self-esteem. The resulting representations differ mainly in terms of attitude, particularly as regards positive views of ageing. A further aim of the research was to investigate the content of some naive theories about what most contributes to good ageing.Also in this case, interesting gender and age differences were found.

Health professions are characterized by high stress and risk of burnout, as a consequence of the many situations and tasks doctors and nurses have to face in their daily work activities. Aim of present study is to present the first validation of the Health Professions Stress and Coping Scale (HPSCS), a new instrument created to assess the stress and coping strategies doctors and nurses adopt in facing 24 specific situations characterizing their job. The HPSCS is designed to evaluate four coping mechanisms: focus on problem, focus on emotion, search of social support, and avoidance. 64 doctors and 99 nurses belonging to various Italian hospitals participated to the study. Results showed the good capacity of the HPSCS to assess the level of stress perceived in specific job situations both for doctors and nurses. Doctors and nurses use different coping strategies; however when the stress is high, both are more prone to adopt disadaptive mechanisms. Finally we identified four clusters of doctors and nurses, characterized by a different use of the two adaptive and the two disadaptive coping strategies.

As to the examination of the psychological reactions and adaptation to the breast cancer diagnosis in women, several studies have been carried out in the past. Hitting the breast, a significant organ for women as well as a femininity, seductiveness and motherhood symbol, breast carcinoma gives rise to a deep psychological unease. This uneasiness appears through anxiety, depression, anger and fears which are connected to the disabling surgery, disease relapse and death. In addition to this there are life-style changes related to physical illness, sexual and conjugal problems, and the impossibility to do normal daily activities. The evidence of the interrelation between breast cancer and emotional, cognitive and behavioural problems in women shows the need of psychotherapeutic interventions able to face such uneasiness. These interventions may be individual or involve the whole family; they may be performed in group or in an integrated way. Therefore this article, based on a critical review regarding several past researches, is directed to explain the psychological impact that the breast cancer has on women and as a consequence to propose probable intervention strategies, in particular as to the aforesaid integrated model.

The aim of this work was to examine, in a group of adolescents, the relationships between the personality traits, defined by the Big Five Model (McCrae and Costa, 1999) and two important dimensions of eating behaviour, namely Healthiness and Regularity (Bonino, 1995, 1996). Results confirmed, consistently with the literature findings, the importance of the Big Five traits and in particular of Conscientiousness and Emotional stability in predicting eating habits in adolescence, in terms of healthiness and regularity.

A research was carried out in order to investigate the occurrence of positive emotions in adolescents’ and young adults’ daily life. Subjects were 327 (177 were adolescents and 150 were adults) from northern Italy. They were asked to keep a semi-structured diary on positive moments and related emotions. Coding procedure determined where the event took place, what triggered it, whom they were with when the feelings occurred, whether they shared feelings with others, the most common emotional labels used, and the emotional intensity. Participants were also asked to specify how satisfied they were with their life. The analysis was carried out on 1.345 incidents of positive moments The results were split in different sections regarding age and gender comparisons. Similarities and differences in epidemiology of positive emotions are described. Young adults’ life-satisfaction is higher as compared to adolescents, whose emotions are, on the contrary, higher as compared to adults.

The study analysed the importance of some individual characteristics on elaborating and evaluating the persuasive efficacy of two messages concerning risky driving among adolescents. Characteristics of the message as vividness, narrative complexity and the clarity of consequences correlate with its dissuasive efficacy. Future time perspective, past behaviours and the perception of seriousness of risky driving are the individual variables that emerge as implicated in a positive evaluation of the video messages.

Second Life is a world in continuous expansion, three-dimensional virtual community that counts beyond 6 million enrolled, but, in cultural, social and psychological terms, what it is truly? It concurs to enter in contact with people who daily we would not have the opportunity to know, it concurs to havie a second possibility in the life, to feel the parts of himself in shadow, positive and/or negative. Which are the deep motivations of who embrace it unconditionally and of who refuse it prioristically? Which are the borders beyond use becames the abuse?

The food is a symbolic system, feeding themselves is not only an material and a physiological action, but symbolic and cultural action. In order to understand, therefore, the actual relationship that the man entertains with the food, it’s necessary to individualize the cultural references that characterize our epoch. The diffusion of alternative and independent dietary models from the traditions of own culinary culture is an indicator of the fact that the feeding is considered today a tool to stick to the desired style of life and to affirm the control on own body and the more diffused dietary models seem to answer to the more ruling needs of the post-modern society.

The present search, born of the collaboration between the Psychiatric Clinic in Palermo and the Department of Pathological Addiction of the AUSL 6 of Palermo, in order to explore and to appraise, from a psychosocial and clinical point of view, as the new technological devices modify and/or condition the behaviors and the styles of coping of the teen-agers. The study, of the one year-old duration, used a questionnaire, on purpose realized, the T.S.B. (Tech Style Behavior), constituted by 32 items with the purpose to verify the presence or absence in various gradients of styles of pathological behavior.

In this article, by using the body as object and subject of the artistic creation, the Body Art, becomes tool to observe, on one side, the transformation of the artistic languages (index of the cultural changes, of the styles of life or the way to compare to the reality), from the other one, the internal world of the artist, that seems to look for the body as “abode” to his own pain. The technological fetish allows in fact to operate an almighty control that maintains the illusion to be able to defeat and to revolve the boundaries of the reality.

The process of counseling online based upon the Elementary Pragmatic Model consists of choosing compass sentences with a strong psychological impact which users must elaborate freely or under guidance, and offers them the chance to interact with the therapist through a forum. Users answer to the test how you see yourself and to a grid about impact every sentences has on them. At the end of the process of ten sessions, each user is makes an evaluation of the practicability and usefulness of the proposed method. The data obtained in a population of 139 subjects have demonstrated the validity of this method.

The results of this research have been introduced, in preliminary form, to the VII National Meeting of the Italian Society of Psychology of the Health to Promote comfort with people, groups, community, held to Cesena between 28 and September 30 th 2006. The problematic use of the cellular phone has been assimilated to the technological behavioral addiction, therefore, the present research proposes to offer a preliminary evaluation of the psychometric proprierties and of the factorial structure of a questionnaire for the cellular addiction (QDC), to appraise the impact of socio-demographic data on the scores of the QDC and to appraise the relationship between the factorial scores of the QDC and some auto-reported indexes related to the use of the cellular phone.