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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. This research investigates the effect of COVID-19 personal impacts on the relationship between perceived economic inequality and individuals' political participation. An online survey was administered to an Italian representative sample of 1,446 people (51% women, mean age of 42.42 years, SD = 12.87). The 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 participation. Moderation analyses were conducted separately for different socioeconomic classes (i.e., lower, middle, and upper classes). Results showed that individuals who perceive greater economic inequality, while controlling for perceived wage gap, 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 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.

In molte ricerche sulla comunicazione visiva (e.g., Belicove, 2011; Cloud, 2008; Edwards & Winkler, 2008; Goldstein, 2009; Jowett & O'Donnell, 2015; Rose, 2012) è emerso come le immagini siano più efficaci delle parole nel catturare l'attenzione e nel consolidare i sentimenti. Alcuni studi (e.g., Peng, 2004; Volpato, Durante, Gabbiadini, Andrighetto, & Mari, 2010) hanno, inoltre, mostrato che le immagini e i mass media rivestono un ruolo fondamentale nella diffusione di pregiudizi, stereotipi e rappresentazioni sociali negative. Per tali ragioni, nel corso degli anni, questa forma di comunicazione è diventata uno dei principali strumenti politici utilizzati a fini propagandistici e persuasivi (e.g., Davis, 2005; Erickson, 2008; Hariman & Lucaites, 2008; James, 2006). La presente ricerca vuole indagare come, attraverso le immagini, la propaganda italiana di estrema destra diffonda la convinzione che alcuni gruppi sociali meritino di essere emarginati ed esclusi. Adottando la teoria della delegittimazione (Bar-Tal, 1989) come quadro teorico di riferimento, 115 manifesti politici utilizzati dal partito nazionalista Forza Nuova nel periodo dal 2009 al 2017 sono stati analizzati. I risultati hanno mostrato che sette delle otto strategie di delegittimazione sono state impiegate nella raffigurazione di differenti gruppi sociali. Attraverso un'analisi delle corrispondenze è, inoltre, emerso come ogni tecnica di delegittimazione sia stata strategicamente applicata a ciascun target delegittimato. Implicazioni teoriche e pratiche sono discusse anche attraverso il confronto dei presenti risultati con quelli di lavori analoghi condotti in passato (e.g., Volpato et al., 2010).

Looking away. Psychosocial process to accept the torture The aim of the paper is the description and the discussion of the recent studies about torture in the domain of social psychology. The research examine the widespread beliefs about the effi cacy of torture, the support given by the public opinion to torture, the psychological processes of legitimization of violence, abuse, social ostracism and exclusion, with particular attention to the dehumanizing mechanisms.

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)

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.

Dehumanization is one of the main strategies to delegitimize the other, to exclude him/her from the circle of those who are considered human, justifying measures of extreme cruelty. There are animalistic and mechanistic forms of dehumanization, which it may also take the form of demonization, biologization, objectification, and invisibility. After a brief review of the psycho-social studies on dehumanization, the present work focuses on the dehumanization of Jews in the Fascist propaganda through the analysis of images that appeared in La Difesa della Razza ("The Defense of the Race"), an Italian magazine published from August 1938 to June 1943 with the aim to convey racist and anti-Semitic ideas to the Italian population. Copyright © FrancoAngeli.

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.

English Starting from the observation that women still represent a minority in the higher echelons of universities and scientific institutions, the article discusses a number of strategies used to 'keep them out'. Historically the main strategy was to refuse to admit women. This refusal was accompanied by discourses devaluing women's intellectual capacities, while stressing their domestic and motherly duties, and by the actual burdening of women with these duties. When women succeeded in entering universities, subsequent strategies have been the appropriation by men of women's scientific production, sexual harassment (going as far as physical elimination) and anti-feminist intellectual harassment. Notwithstanding this strong opposition, during the last 30 years scientific production by women and feminists has been extensive, of high quality and innovative. This knowledge has advanced our understanding of important scientific and social problems, benefited both men and women, and contributed in some cases to a limitation of traditional male privileges. French Partant du constat que les femmes sont encore minoritaires dans les positions de pouvoir à l'Université et dans les institutions scientifiques, cet article présente certaines des stratégies utilisées pour garder les femmes à l'écart. Traditionnellement, la principale stratégie a été de leur refuser l'accès à l'Université. Ce refus a été accompagné de discours dévaluant leur capacités intellectuelles et mettant en avant leurs devoirs domestiques et maternels, et de leur maintien dans des conditions sociales oË elles étaient effectivement restreintes par ces devoirs. Dès lors que les femmes ont réussi à accéder à l'Université, d'autres stratégies ont été utilisées, telles que l'appropriation de leur production scientifique par les hommes, le harcèlement sexuel (poussé jusqu'à l'élimination physique) et le harcèlement intellectuel anti-féministe. Malgré cette opposition tenace, dans les 30 dernières années la production scientifique des femmes et des féministes s'est révélée large, brillante et innovatrice. Cette connaissance a permis d'avancer dans la compréhension de questions importantes sur les plans scientifique et social, a profité aux hommes et aux femmes, et a contribué à limiter certains privilèges masculins traditionnels.

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.

In this article we use a social representational perspective on a large sample of European students to consider the interplay between pacifist attitudes and representations of World War I (WWI). WWI gave rise to pacifist movements across the globe. Across 10 European countries (N = 1,347 undergraduate students), we invited participants to report the first 5 words that came to their mind when thinking about this event and measured their level of pacifism. Analyses of the reported words revealed the presence of seven lexical classes corresponding to 2 main perspectives on WWI. The first main perspective was characterized by "analytical" representations of the war, with a focus on the places and actors of WWI. The second perspective highlighted negative emotions and appraisals associated with war. Overall, we found that the pacifist attitudes we analyzed were associated with a view of the conflict in terms of negatively valanced words, both at the emotional level and in terms of concrete consequences. Conversely lower pacifist attitudes were linked with an emphasis upon weapons. The present results help fill a gap in the literature on attitudes toward peace and war by evidencing their interplay with the way individuals view war. These findings allow us to establish a connection between mainstream, individualcentered approach to attitudes relying on individual premises and social representation theory. Moreover, in line with historical scholarship, these results suggest that a common interpretational framework underlies a view of the conflict associated with the pacifist wave that emerged 100 years ago and current pacifist attitudes. Finally, the present study is the first large scale psychology study of the social representations of the Great War.

The present study aims at expanding research on dehumanization in the work domain by exploring laypeople's dehumanizing perceptions towards stigmatized workers. Starting from Hughes’ (1951, Social psychology at the crossroads, Harper & Brothers, New York; Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999, Academy of Management Review, 24, 413) concept of ‘dirty work’, the present research aims to demonstrate that the different types of occupational taint elicit distinct dehumanizing images of certain occupational groups. Employing a cluster analysis, the results showed that workers in the physical taint cluster were most strongly associated with biological metaphors, workers in the social taint cluster were perceived as most similar to objects, and workers in the moral taint cluster were perceived as most similar to animals. The theoretical and practical implications are considered.

Research has shown that exposure to violent media increases aggression. However, the neural underpinnings of violent-media-related aggression are poorly understood. Additionally, few experiments have tested hypotheses concerning how to reduce violent-media-related aggression. In this experiment, we focused on a brain area involved in the regulation of aggressive impulses—the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC). We tested the hypothesis that brain polarization through anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over rVLPFC reduces aggression related to violent video games. Participants (N = 79) were randomly assigned to play a violent or a nonviolent video game while receiving anodal or sham stimulation. Afterward, participants aggressed against an ostensible partner using the Taylor aggression paradigm (Taylor Journal of Personality, 35, 297–310, 1967), which measures both unprovoked and provoked aggression. Among those who received sham stimulation, unprovoked aggression was significantly higher for violent-game players than for nonviolent-game players. Among those who received anodal stimulation, unprovoked aggression did not differ for violent- and nonviolent-game players. Thus, anodal stimulation reduced unprovoked aggression in violent-game players. No significant effects were found for provoked aggression, suggesting tit-for-tat responding. This experiment sheds light on one possible neural underpinning of violent-media-related aggression—the rVLPFC, a brain area involved in regulating negative feelings and aggressive impulses.

The current work aimed to extend the burgeoning literature on working objectification by investigating the effects of particular job activities on self-perception. By integrating relevant theoretical reflections with recent empirical evidence, we expected that performing objectifying (i.e., repetitive, fragmented, and other-directed) tasks would affect participants' self-objectification and, in turn, their belief in personal free will. In three studies, we consistently found that performing a manual (Study 1 and Study 2) or a computer (Study 3) objectifying task (vs. a non-objectifying task and vs. the baseline condition) led participants to objectify themselves in terms of both decreased self-attribution of human mental states (Study 1 and Study 3) and increased self-perception of being instrument-like (Study 2 and Study 3). Crucially, this increased self-objectification mediated the relationship between performing an objectifying activity and the participants' decreased belief in personal free will. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered.

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.

Objectification occurs when a person is perceived and/or treated like an object. With the present work, we overview the available measures of objectification and present a series of studies aimed at investigating the validity of the task of inverted body recognition proposed by Bernard and colleagues (2012), which might potentially be a useful cognitive measure of objectification. We conducted three studies. Study 1 (N = 101) is a direct replication of Bernard et al.’s study: participants were presented with the same photos of sexualized male and female targets used in the original research. Study 2a (N = 100) is a conceptual replication: we used different images of scantily dressed male and female models. Finally, in Study 2b (N = 100), we investigated a boundary condition by presenting to participants photos of the same models as in Study 2a, but fully dressed and non-sexualized. Using mixed-effects models for completely-crossed classified data structures, we investigated the relationship between the inversion effect and the stimulus’ asymmetry, sexualization and attractiveness, and the perceivers’ self-objectification, sexism, and automatic woman-human association. Study 1 replicated the original results, showing a stronger inversion effect for male photos. However, no difference between male and female stimuli emerged in either Study 2a or 2b. Moreover, the impact of the other variables on the inversion effect was highly unstable across the studies. These aspects together indicate that the inversion effect depends on the specific set of stimuli and limits the generalizability of results collected using this method.

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

Past research suggested that—from the perspective of perpetrators—animal metaphors are a powerful means to reinforce social exclusion and to foster hostile behaviors against the targets of social exclusion. In the current work, we focus on the consequences of this dehumanizing form of social exclusion from the perspective of victims. In two studies, we manipulated the presence of animal metaphors in a variety of contexts of interpersonal social exclusion. Our results showed that when social exclusion is associated with animal metaphors, its consequences are exacerbated. In particular, labelling targets of social exclusion as animals indirectly caused them to display more aggressive tendencies compared with when they are labelled with corresponding offending, but nondehumanizing, attributes. Crucially, this increased aggressiveness was mediated by higher perceptions of being treated (Study 1) or viewed (Study 2) by others as animal-like. Overall, our research showed the detrimental effects of the interplay between social exclusion and animal metaphors from the perspective of victims.

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.

Sexualization in mass media is a widespread phenomenon. Although sexualization and sexual objectification are often used as synonymous, they are two different concepts. Across two studies, we investigated how sexualization affects perceptions of women (Study 1) and men (Study 2) as sexual objects. Participants were asked to judge sexual objectification, competence, and sexiness of female and male models portrayed with different degrees of sexualization, namely, as Non-Revealing (dressed), merely Revealing (undressed), and Sexualized Revealing (undressed and provocative). The results of both studies showed that as the level of sexualization increased so did participants’ perceptions of the targets as sexual objects. However, the level of sexualization affected perceived competence and sexiness differently depending on the target’s gender. Male models’ competence decreased as the level of sexualization increased, whereas female models portrayed as merely Revealing and as Sexualized Revealing were judged as equally incompetent. Male targets’ sexiness was not affected by the level of portrayals’ sexualization, whereas Sexualized Revealing portrayals enhanced the perceived sexiness of female targets. Finally, in Study 2, the results showed that male targets in Sexualized Revealing portrayals were judged as less masculine. Our findings suggest that sexualization contributes similarly to the perception of both women and men as sexual objects but affects other variables depending on the target’s gender. Our work extends previous literature and informs us about the consequences that sexualization of men and women have on others’ judgments.

In this moment of increasing social inequalities after the Great Recession, studying the psychological processes that contribute to maintaining such inequalities is an urgent task for scholars. These processes include specific social-class-member perceptions that function to make these disparities seemingly fair. In particular, stereotypes and dehumanizing images of low-status workers have become powerful means for perpetuating social disparities across history and cultures. In the present work, we aim to reveal the invariance of these images and their importance in maintaining the social hierarchies through an integrated approach that combines a historical perspective with an illustrative review of the empirical research. Further, we aim to show how the stigma of low-status work affects the workers’ self-view and may lead them to accept the status quo. We conclude by discussing the implications of this work for enriching the understanding of social-class divides and suggesting avenues for future research.

A great deal of research has investigated gender-related objectification. In the current work, we aim to extend the empirical research on this phenomenon to the working domain. Consistent with several theoretical assumptions, we expected that factory workers would be objectified as a consequence of their work. In Study 1, we showed that each of the critical features of factory work (i.e., repetitiveness of movements, fragmentation of activities and dependence on the machine) significantly affected the view of the worker as an instrument (vs. a human being) and as less able to experience human mental states. Coherently, we found that factory workers, unlike artisans, were perceived as more instrument-like (Study 2) and as less able to experience mental states (Study 3) when participants were asked to focus on the target's manual activities rather than on the target as a person. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered.

In this issue, (Ferguson, C. J., & Donnellan, B. D., Journal of Youth and and Adolescence, published online 21 June 2017) criticize one of our studies (Gabbiadini, A., Riva, P., Andrighetto, L., Volpato, C., & Bushman, B. J., PLoS ONE, 11: 1-14, 2016) that found violent sexist video games can reduce empathy for female violence victims in male players who identify with violent male game characters, and do so by increasing masculine beliefs. Their main criticism is a "straw person" argument built on a claim that we never made (i.e., a direct effect of sexist-violent video games on empathy). They also made several other criticisms of our article. We appreciate the opportunity to respond to their criticisms in this article. We also point out some flaws in their reanalysis. Despite their criticisms, the core contributions of our original article remain intact.

Online video games are a popular leisure activity around the world; such virtual environments enable new ways for social identity to develop. This study investigated the motives affecting social identification processes in the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft (WoW). In this video game, players interact with other players in a tridimensional virtual world through their avatar. A sample of 92 WoW players took part in a data collection Web survey. Building on the theory of social identity, we tested the predictive power of three identification motives: self-esteem enhancement, optimal distinctiveness, and uncertainty reduction. Additionally, considering previous research on MMORPGs, we added identification with the game character and membership duration as further predictors of virtual group identification. The construct of virtual group identification was analyzed at two levels: identification with the faction and guild of the character. Furthermore, the current study was a first attempt to understand whether online identification may lead to group behavior such as evaluative ingroup bias. Our results indicated that traditional motivational theories of social identity were mostly confirmed. Moreover, identification with the avatar emerged as a strong predictor of group identity. Additionally, at both levels of analysis, group attachment led to an evaluative differentiation between the ingroup and outgroup. The findings are discussed in light of modern theories of social identity and media research.

Violent video games glorify and reward immoral behaviors (e.g., murder, assault, rape, robbery, arson, motor vehicle theft). Based on the moral disengagement theory, we predicted that violent games would increase multiple immoral behaviors (i.e., lack of self-control, cheating, aggression), especially for people high in moral disengagement. High school students (N = 172) who had completed a measure of moral disengagement were randomly assigned to play one of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) violent video games, or a nonviolent game. Self-control was measured using the weight of uneaten chocolates (i.e., M&M's) in a bowl by the computer. After gameplay, participants could cheat on a test to win raffle tickets for attractive prizes (e.g., iPad). Aggression was measured using a competitive task in which participants could give an ostensible partner unpleasant noise blasts through headphones. Results showed that violent video games decreased self-control and increased cheating and aggression, especially for people high in moral disengagement. © The Author(s) 2013.

In line with previous results that challenge the traditional primacy of warmth over competence in outgroup perception, we propose to bridge elements from stereotype content model and social identity theory: Perceivers will use the competence and warmth dimensions differentially when interpreting higher or lower status outgroup members' behavior. We test the hypothesis that the dimension that is less favorable for the outgroup and more favorable for the ingroup will be used. In particular, we investigate whether the warmth dimension would better predict the interpretation of higher status outgroup members' behavior than the competence dimension, whereas the competence dimension would better predict the interpretation of lower status outgroup members' behavior than the warmth dimension. Two studies separately test these effects. Results suggest the existence of a motivated bias in interpreting outgroup members' behavior, especially when there is ingroup identification.

The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations (N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI-related objective indicators of victimization at national and family levels. This suggests that collective victimhood is partly grounded in the actual experience of WWI. In addition, we show that sense of collective victimhood positively predicts acknowledgment of the suffering inflicted by one's nation on other countries during WWI. This is consistent with a social representation of WWI as involving a vast massacre in which nations were both victim and perpetrator. Finally, we find that objective indicators of victimization predict pacifism in divergent ways, with an indicator at the national level associated with more pacifist attitudes and an indicator at the family level being associated with less pacifist attitudes. This finding suggests that war-torn societies may have developed social representations favouring peaceful coexistence whereas, at the family level, victimization may still foster retaliatory tendencies., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The spontaneous ascription of less-than-human nature to objectified individuals is an important phenomenon and research is needed that links it to its antecedents and consequences. To conduct such research it is mandatory to possess psychometrically sound measures of objectification. Here we review a range of such measures in terms of reliability and validity

We summarize the main findings of Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015), highlight its empirical contributions, and note interesting patterns and implications for future research. The results demonstrate that consensus exists among experts on the reality of harmful media violence effects on children and adolescents. We note likely differences in the makeup of the different samples and how these might have affected the results. This comment also presents a new breakdown of the Bushman et al. findings, high- lighting the high consensus for causal screen media violence effects on aggression, which fairly closely mirrors findings from that voluminous research literature, and compares this to the lack of consensus on the harmful effects of print media violence, which corresponds to a quite small research literature. We conclude with a call for research on how to overcome resistance to unpopular scientific findings.

The survival of a virtual community is guaranteed by the users’ creation of content. However, the literature has found that the percentage of users who create innovative content is very modest. The content contribution process can also be interpreted as a social collective action in which we-intentions play a primary role. Nevertheless, some people choose not to participate in the collective action, but to benefit from the community’s resources and to maximize individual outcomes. In this study (N = 250), we investigated the effects of the free- riding tendency, conceived as the willingness to maximize personal outcomes. The specific setting was a virtual support forum, the most common type of web platform, generally used instrumentally by web users to find information and solutions to specific problems. We used the theory of planned behavior theoretical framework, plus social influence variables to test the effect of the free-riding tendency as a drawback for contributions, considering both the role of individual and we-intentions on the observed behavior. Findings showed that neither we-intentions nor I-intentions predicted the actual contribution behavior. Both types of intentions and contribution behavior were negatively influenced only by the free-riding tendency construct. Considerations and future developments of these results are discussed.

In the historiographical literature, the debate on the interpretations of Italian Fascism is still alive. Fascism has combined violence and atrocities, with social control and consensus construction. Thus, a positive vision of this regime could have survived at time passing. Additionally, the Italian government, except for a few acknowledgements, has never apologized for the crimes committed during the fascist era. As a consequence, the Italian public opinion has never had the chance for an historical reflection. Thus, people may alter the historical record to make the ingroup actions justified and glorified, while de-emphasizing episodes that may potentially damage the ingroup image. A qualitative study aimed at identifying the social representation of contemporary Italians concerning which groups or individuals are considered victims, perpetrators and by-standers of the fascist crimes. Additionally, we asked participants to recall positive and negative aspects or events of the fascist period. Results showed that Mussolini and Hitler, with fascists and Nazis are considered the perpetrators of the historical period. Italians are viewed more as bystanders. Additionally, Fascism is also remembered, along with its crimes (e.g., racial laws, politic persecutions, etc.), also for some positive aspects (e.g., structural and social reforms).

Empathy--putting oneself in another's shoes--has been described as the "social glue" that holds society together. This study investigates how exposure to sexist video games can decrease empathy for female violence victims. We hypothesized that playing violent-sexist video games would increase endorsement of masculine beliefs, especially among participants who highly identify with dominant and aggressive male game characters. We also hypothesized that the endorsement of masculine beliefs would reduce empathy toward female violence victims. Participants (N = 154) were randomly assigned to play a violent-sexist game, a violent-only game, or a non-violent game. After gameplay, measures of identification with the game character, traditional masculine beliefs, and empathy for female violence victims were assessed. We found that participants' gender and their identification with the violent male video game character moderated the effects of the exposure to sexist-violent video games on masculine beliefs. Our results supported the prediction that playing violent-sexist video games increases masculine beliefs, which occurred for male (but not female) participants who were highly identified with the game character. Masculine beliefs, in turn, negatively predicted empathic feelings for female violence victims. Overall, our study shows who is most affected by the exposure to sexist-violent video games, and why the effects occur. (200 words).

La semantica della comunicazione in rete è differente da quella della carta stampata e tale differenza emerge anche nella somministrazione di web survey. In psicologia sociale, e in generale in tutte le discipline sociali, poche sono le rassegne e gli studi metodologici offerti al ricercatore sull’utilizzo di specifici strumenti informatici. Questa rassegna presenta una panoramica degli attuali strumenti offerti dal mercato software –commerciale e open source– per la creazione di una sessione di raccolta dati tramite la rete. Vengono inoltre proposte considerazioni circa il campionamento via web e le problematiche legate all’accessibilità di una web survey creata ad hoc tramite linguaggi di programmazione The semantics of the communication in Internet is different from the one on printed paper, and this difference also persists in the administration of web surveys. In social psychology, and more generally in all the social science disciplines, there are few reviews and methodological studies available to a researcher describing the use of specific computer programs. This work presents an overview of the current tools and software offered by both the commercial market and the open source community for collecting data online. Furthermore, considerations are described about sampling issues and web accessibility of a web survey created ad hoc with programming languages.