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In the present work, we analysed a broader impact of self-objectification at the workplace, that is the workers’ undermined intentions to protest against the existing social inequalities. In doing so, we conducted a cross-sectional study involving factory workers (N = 156). A serial mediation model showed that their self-objectification, in terms of decreased self-attribution of humanness and increased self-perception as instrument-like, was linked to diminished beliefs in personal free will which, in turn, was associated with increased system justification and decreased activist tendencies. Theoretical contributions for self-objectification literature and practical implications in the maintenance of the existing social inequalities are discussed.

Economic inequality qualifies as a structural characteristic leading to political action, albeit this relationship manifests differently across socioeconomic classes. COVID-19 pandemic has amplified existing economic inequalities in ways that increased social tensions and political unrest around the world. "is research investigates the effect of COVID-19 personal impacts on the relationship between perceived economic inequality and individuals’ political actions. An online survey was administered to a representative sample of 1446 Italians of which 51% were women with a mean age of 42.42 years (SD = 12.87). "e questionnaire assessed the perceived economic inequality, the personal impacts of COVID-19 (i.e., on finance, mental health, and ability to procure resources), and individuals’ involvement in political actions. Moderation analyses were conducted separately for different socioeconomic classes. Results showed that individuals who perceive greater economic inequality are more likely to take action, but only if they belong to the higher class. For lower-class individuals, perceiving greater inequality erodes political action. Interaction effects occurred mainly in the middle class and with COVID-19 impacts on resources procurement, which inhibits political action.

The present research aims to take a deeper look at the relationship between working self-objectification and belief in personal free will. Previous research found that working self-objectification, due to the perception of being objectified or the execution of objectifying tasks, negatively affects belief in personal free will. However, these findings have been mainly tested through laboratory studies considering undergraduates. In this work we aim to verify whether this pattern also emerges when considering workers. We conducted a field study involving employees in the production lines of different companies. They completed a questionnaire on objectifying job features, perception of being objectified by superiors, self-objectification self-perception as instrument-like and self-attribution of human mental states and belief in personal free will. As expected, objectifying job features and perceptions of being objectified were positively related to self-objectification that, in turn, was associated with decreased beliefs in personal free will.

The present study aims to expand research on emotions in intergroup relations by exploring the impact of disgust on aggressive intentions and dehumanization. Starting from Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley's (1999) conceptualization of disgust as "the body and soul emotion," we hypothesized that different forms of disgust may affect judgments about others. Specifically, by manipulating group membership (ingroup vs. outgroup) and disgust experiences (physical disgust vs. moral disgust vs. non-disgusting condition), we assumed that physical and moral disgust may differently affect aggressive tendencies and dehumanizing perceptions toward the outgroup. As expected, results showed that physical disgust led to an unwillingness to engage in contact with an outgroup member, whereas moral disgust resulted in a desire to insult that member. Furthermore, we found that physical disgust increased the view of the outgroup member as a contagious entity, whereas moral disgust led to an increased association of that member with animalistic metaphors. The implications are discussed.

This study evaluated the translucency, contrast ratio and fluorescence of resin nanoceramic and zirconia materials employed for manufacturing of the indirect restorations.

As part of a larger research project, we asked 1,806 adults from France, Greece, and Italy (in the larger project, Portuguese students were included) to discuss the causes of the current economic crisis and the strategies that should be adopted by the countries to overcome it. The six factors extracted by the factor analysis revealed that the economic crisis was attributed to the depletion of resources, the weakness of the financial system, planned conspiracy, system inequality, overconsumption, or the weakness of the political system. These causes had cross-national structural equivalence and overconsumption - a people-blaming cause - as opposed to conspiracy attributions to a global power or to structural inequalities inherent to the system. Further analyses found three types of strategies to exit the crisis - conforming to EU requests, rationalizing the public sector, and leaving the European Union - but failed to establish cross-national structural equivalence. Results thus suggest that there is some similarity in the discourses of the media that is reflected on people's perceptions about the causes of the economic crisis, but that the strategies to exit the crisis are more linked to the socioeconomic conditions of the countries. © 2018 Ubiquity Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recalling the Italian colonial experience elicits the collective emotions of guilt, shame, and ingroup-focused anger. We expected that these emotions would predict different reparation intentions in favor of the colonized populations' descendants. Students and non-students were recruited (N = 152) and asked to rate their emotions of collective guilt, shame, and anger for the violence that their ingroup had perpetrated against colonized people. Results showed that shame affected intentions to provide economic compensation to current inhabitants of the ex-colonies. This relationship was mediated by concerns of damage for the ingroup's image. Anger toward the ingroup predicted intentions to help immigrants from the ex-colonies now living in Italy. Interestingly, empathy toward the outgroup mediated the latter relation. Finally, collective guilt was not reliably associated with any reparation strategy. These findings have implications for theory and for the historical collective memory of Italian colonialism., International Journal of Conflict and Violence (IJCV), Vol 4 No 1 (2010)

In this paper, we analyse the responses of 450 students from Greece, Portugal and Italy, who were asked to assess the efficacy of 32 actions as reactions against the austerity measures implemented to deal with the financial and economic crisis. These actions were organized into six types by a principal component factor analysis, and were ranked as follows from the most effective to the least effective: protectionism, civic participation, political resistance to government measures, individual financial protection, economic resistance to government measures and violence. Results showed that Greek respondents, who were in the most difficult socioeconomic situation, viewed all types of actions, except civic participation and individual financial protection, as more effective than the other respondents did. Regression analyses revealed, however, that crisis-related variables, in particular, the attribution of responsibility for the crisis to internal factors and not to the people, and individual-related variables, such as political orientation and the intensity of depressive feelings, were strong predictors of the assessment of the efficacy of actions, in addition to the socioeconomic situation of the countries. © 2017 Les Auteur(e)s.

In the current research, we investigated the lay representations of the recent economic downturn, that had severe consequences on the lives of the involved people. We compared data of respondents from two countries that were affected to a different degree by the crisis: Greece (N = 529) and Italy (N = 327). We examined laypeople's representations of the perceived causes of the crunch (e.g., overconsumption, obscure power conspiracy), the strategies that are believed to be useful to overcome it (e.g., conforming to EU request, EU exit), and the political participatory activities (e.g., legal and illegal activism) that people intend to adopt. These variables were analyzed in light of two main predictors: political orientation and subjective economic vulnerability. The main hypothesis was that self-positioning on the left/right axis may be a strong driver of lay representations and political participation. However, we expected that in conjunction with the linear effect of this variable, its quadratic effect should be considered as well. The latter specifies that in some circumstances the opinions of people self-positioned at the poles of the political spectrum may be closer to each other than to the opinions of the people that position themselves in the center which sometimes do not behave as moderate but appear more conformist. Additionally, we hypothesized that vulnerability may be a motive to seek for explanations of the crisis, to find strategies and to engage in activities to overcome it. Findings were generally in line with predictions and were discussed in the light of recent research and the context of analysis. © 2017 Les Auteur(e)s.

Objectives: Objectification theory is a suitable framework for understanding how media pressure is translated into behavioural and emotional risk factors, potentially promoting eating and body-related disturbances among women. A large body of research conducted with American and Australian female samples support the tenets of this theory. The present study extending previous work by investigating the internalization of sociocultural standards of beauty promoted by media as an antecedent of the body objectification process and by examining the theory's applicability in a sample of Italian women. Methods: A cross-sectional design was used. A sample of 408 young Italian women completed questionnaire measures of internalization of media ideals, disordered eating behaviours, as well as the proposed mediating variables of body surveillance, body shame and social anxiety. Path analysis procedures within the Mplus program were used to determine whether the hypothesized theoretical model provided a good fit to the data. Bias-corrected bootstrapping method was used to estimate the significance of the indirect effects. Results: The pattern of correlations is consistent with the objectification theory (Table I). Path analysis indicated that internalization of media ideals leads to body surveillance, which in turn leads to body shame and social anxiety, which both strongly predict women's disordered eating behaviours (Fig. 1). Body surveillance mediated the links of internalization to body shame and social anxiety. Social anxiety was an additional mediator of the link between body surveillance and disordered eating behaviours, whereas body shame mediated the links of internalization and body surveillance to disordered eating behaviours (Table II). Conclusions: The objectification theory provides a useful framework to identify predictors of disordered eating behaviours in women. Practical implications are discussed.

Emerging research suggests that outgroup partner's anxiety can disrupt intergroup rapport-building. This study extends previous findings by investigating the interactive effects of anticipated outgroup partner's anxiety and perceived ethnic discrimination on self-anxiety and intergroup contact avoidance. A sample of immigrant adolescents belonging to different ethnic minorities in Italy (N = 118) was considered. Results showed that when participants expected to interact with an anxious outgroup (Italian) versus in-group partner, self-anxiety increased and, as a consequence, their intentions to avoid future encounters. However, these effects were observed only for participants with higher (vs. lower) perceptions of being discriminated against. The implications of these results for interethnic communication and misunderstandings are discussed. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

Exposure to violent video games can cause a wide array of harmful consequences to adolescents. This study shows preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of a brief intervention to decrease aggression and increase self-control following exposure to a violent video game. Participants (157 high-school students; age range: 13–19) were randomly assigned to play a violent or nonviolent video game for 25 min. Next, they were exposed to an intervention (i.e., a brief article) designed to induce weak versus strong beliefs in self-control capabilities. We also included a neutral article unrelated to self-control. After reading the article, aggression and self-control-related variables (i.e., impulses inhibition, cognitive performance) were measured. Aggression was operationalized using the intensity and duration of aversive noise participants gave an accomplice on the Competitive Reaction Time Task, impulse inhibition was operationalized using the ability to resist eating candies, and cognitive performance was operationalized using the “spot the differences” task. Our results found that adolescents who played a violent video game were more aggressive and reported lower levels of impulse inhibition (i.e., ate more candies). However, inducing beliefs in self-control capabilities by reading a brief article stating that the human’s brain is a powerful tool for exercising self-control eliminated these harmful effects. The interaction was nonsignificant for cognitive performance. Overall, our study offers initial evidence that a brief intervention might help limit the harmful consequences of exposure to violent video games on adolescents.

Through two studies (N = 602) conducted in Italy between February and March 2020, we examined the impact of the COVID‐19 emergency on biologization—a form of dehumanization that involves the perception of others as contagious entities—and outgroup prejudice. Overall, results showed that higher emergency perception was associated with greater biologization toward the groups most affected by the virus, namely the Chinese outgroup and the Italian ingroup. In turn, biologization toward the outgroup increased prejudice against that group. We also found that when the pandemic hit Italy, the greater emergency perception was associated with increased emotional closeness with Chinese people, resulting in reduced biologization and prejudice toward them. However, these results held true only for Italian respondents who reported higher levels of ingroup biologization. Taken together, our findings contribute to the knowledge gaps of biologization and prejudice by also providing relevant insights into the ongoing health emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Applied Social Psychology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The goal of this research was to document the frequency of street harassment and examine the associations among street harassment experiences, negative psychological outcomes, and changes in behavioural habits. A sample of students and workers at an Italian university was surveyed (N = 2, 764). Findings indicated that exposure to street harassment had negative psychological effects regardless of whether people labelled their experiences as harassment or not. Furthermore, analyses demonstrated that negative outcomes deriving from street harassment mediated the relationship between harassing behaviours experienced by respondents and the probability that they changed their daily routine. Crucially, all the tested models remained significant by controlling for participants' gender, age, and role. Research and practical implications were discussed.

Through three studies ('N' = 306), we analysed the association between physical disgust and implicit biologization – the perception of others as disease organisms. In doing so, we employed an adapted version of the Semantic Misattribution Procedure (SMP). Study 1 found that the higher was the level of physical (vs. moral) disgust that White participants felt towards Black people, the higher was their implicit tendency to biologize this ethnic group. Study 2 and Study 3 experimentally replicated the association between physical disgust and biologization by manipulating physical disgust through vignettes that portrayed a target behaving in a physically (vs. morally vs. non-disgusting) way. Results showed that participants assigned to the physical disgust condition biologized more the target – both implicitly and explicitly – than participants in the moral disgust and non-disgusting condition. Overall, these findings shed light on the biological dehumanization of others and its emotional roots, by thus paving the way for its prevention.

Objectification refers to the perception and treatment of human beings as mere objects. Although this dehumanizing process has deeply permeated the domain of work throughout history, social psychology researchers have only recently begun to empirically investigate it. Here, we review the recent literature that analysed working objectification by considering its two main facets: objectification (when workers are objectified by others) and self-objectification (when workers objectify themselves). First, we theoretically define the construct of working objectification, disentangling it from related constructs and reviewing the research on motivational and cognitive processes underpinning workers’ objectification. Then, we focus on the workers’ perspective and systematise the research on the consequences of the metaperception of being objectified. Finally, we focus on a series of experimental and field studies that analyse the antecedents and consequences of workers’ self-objectification. We conclude by discussing future directions and highlighting the theoretical and practical contributions of this line of research.

The present studies aim to expand research on dehumanization in the work domain by exploring the biologization – an unexplored form of dehumanization that involves the perception of others as infected and contagious – of physically tainted workers. By integrating the literature on biologization with that of disgust and physically dirty work, we expected that the biologization of workers would be explained by their dirty work environment and by increased feelings of disgust towards them. In Study 1, we showed that focusing on a dirty work environment (vs. on the person performing the work) increased feelings of disgust towards workers and, in turn, their biologization. Coherently, in Study 2, we found that a physically tainted occupation (vs. baseline condition) increased participants’ feelings of disgust and biological dehumanization towards the worker. In contrast, a non-physically tainted occupation (vs. baseline condition) had no effects on disgust and biologization. The theoretical and practical implications are considered.

The present study aims to investigate the indirect link between sexual objectification and belief in personal free will. We hypothesized that being subjected to objectifying commentary would lead women to self-objectify and, in turn, to perceive themselves as having less personal free will. In this study, 105 women were asked to sign up a website created for this study by providing a personal description and a photo. After signing up, they received feedback from a fictitious male user. Depending on the condition, the comment was neutral (baseline), focused on their description (non-objectifying) or focused on their physical appearance (objectifying). The results showed that participants in the objectifying condition (vs. non-objectifying vs. baseline) self-objectified (i.e., perceived themselves as lacking human mental states and more as an instrument vs. a human) and, in turn, believed that they had less personal free will. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for educators and therapists are discussed.

The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations’ leaders while the responsibility of the populations is minimized. Building on the concept of social representation of history (Liu and Hilton, 2005), we suggest that the social representations of the Great War fulfill social psychological functions in contemporary Europe. We suggest that WWI may function as a charter for European integration. Their content also suggests a desire to distinguish a positively valued ingroup ("the people") from powerful elites, construed as an outgroup., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The present work explores whether self-objectification triggered by doing peculiar work activities would increase people’s conforming behavior. We conducted an experimental study in which participants (N = 140) were asked to perform a high objectifying activity (vs. low objectifying activity vs. baseline condition) simulating a real computer job. Afterwards, their levels of self-objectification and conforming behavior were assessed. Results revealed that participants who performed the high objectifying activity self-objectified (i.e., perceived themselves as lacking human mental states) more than the other conditions and, in turn, conformed more to the judgments of unknown similar others. Crucially, increased self-objectification mediated the effects of the high objectifying activity on enhancing conforming behavior. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed