Paola Villano
Biographic Data
| ID | 1258705 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paola Villano |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paola |
| FAMILY NAME | Villano |
| SIGNATURE | VILLANO P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bologna |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3079-381X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Digital bias in sexuality education: An intersectional analysis of AI responses to simulated Italian adolescents
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used by adolescents to seek information about sexuality, relationships, and well-being. However, little is known about how these systems discursively construct and mediate such interactions. This study examines how three commercial LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) respond to simulated Italian adolescent personas used as analytical probes for algorithmic bias. Drawing on 120 standardized Italian-lang…
War and Terrorism Perceptions a Decade Later: Target Distinction or Ethnic-Cultural Bias
Recent events involving war and terrorism have rekindled the debate about the meaning of such concepts and how people define those actions. Previous research from the perspective of social psychology has suggested that the main criterion for distinguishing acts of war from terrorist actions is the differentiation between military and civilian targets. However, a secondary criterion related to the ethnic-cultural identity of the aggressor has also…
Making the maranza: Youth, class and masculinities in the digital politics of exclusion
This article examines how the figure of the maranza, a recurring and controversial character in Italian digital discourse, operates as a symbolic category through which youth, class and masculinity are negotiated. Adopting a social constructionist perspective, the term maranza circulates primarily as a stereotype attributed to others rather than as a self-claimed identity, functioning as a discursive label through which youth deviance, class exce…
You're a man, so you're out of place: Reflexive thematic analysis of focus group with Italian teachers and educators
Human, Animal and Automata Attributions: An Investigation of the Multidimensionality of the Ontologization Process
The ontologization process involves the use of social representation relating to the human–animal binary to classify ingroup and outgroup members. To date, no study has investigated the multidimensional nature (i.e. human, animal and automata) of the ontologizing process via structural equation modelling (SEM). Four hundred and twenty-one Italian participants were asked to attribute 24 positive/negative, human/animal/automata associates to each o…
Social Representations of the War in Italy during the Russia/Ukraine Conflict
Social representations of the war, anchored in historical experience and cultural values, play a motivational role in justifying collective behavior. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the research delves into the meanings associated with war through a social representation approach. Employing Doise’s sociodynamic approach, researchers identify the semantic field linked with war and analyze its organizing principles, revealing the varia…
Social invisibility and discrimination of Roma people in Italy and Brazil
In everyday debates on topics such as cultural differences, it seems relevant to analyze not only institutional conversations or speeches, but also mass-media communications. The way the media portray social events contributes to the construction of our categories of explanation of the world. The main purpose of this research is to analyze the representations of ‘gypsies’ in news articles published in some of the most important national newspaper…
And yet I’m an adult now’. The influence of parental criticism on women’s body satisfaction/dissatisfaction during emerging adulthood
Body dissatisfaction is widely recognized as an important public health concern mainly for women because of its increasing incidence worldwide. The aim of this exploratory study was to test the predictive role of family influence on body satisfaction (BS) among young Italian women, during a decade conceptualized as ‘emerging adulthood’. Instruments designed to assess BS, appearance-focused parental comments, maternal and paternal criticism were a…
Left–Right Orientation and Electoral Choices: Divergences in the Relationships With Authority and Out-Groups
New political parties and movements have recently grown across Europe. These parties often state their distance from the classic left-right juxtaposition, even if their voters still place themselves in the left-right continuum. The aim of the present research was to focus on the Italian political context and to analyze differences between left of center and right of center self-positioned people on attitudes concerning authority-individual and in…
Stereotyping Roma people in Italy: IRT models for ambivalent prejudice measurement
Attitudes of Heterosexual Men and Women Toward HIV Negative and Positive Gay Men
Attitudes of Italian heterosexual men and women toward gay men, both HIV positive and negative, are poorly investigated. Italian culture is still extremely conservative and provides limited support to the gay community (e.g., lack of same-sex marriage recognition). Consequently, gay men experience social exclusion and disparities. The present study explores the association between homophobia and closeness with sexual orientation and HIV status. 2…
On Active Citizenship: Discourses and Language about Youth and Migrants in Italy
The civic and political participation of young people and especially young migrants, who have limited rights of citizenship, is still a significant problem in Italy. Young people struggle to find opportunities and feel excluded from politics: the political agenda tends to see them more as a problem than as a resource. In this article, we illustrate the results of research to understand the dynamics of political and civic participation of young pe…
Attribution and Categorization Effects in the Representation of Gender Stereotypes
Social stereotypes involve judgments of how typical certain personality traits are of a group. According to the attribution hypothesis, judgments of trait typicality depend on the perceived prevalence of the trait in the target group. According to the categorization hypothesis, such judgments depend on the degree to which a trait is thought to be more or less prevalent in the target group than in a relevant comparison group. A study conducted wit…
Social Dominance Orientation and Prejudice in an Italian Sample
Social dominance orientation has been proposed as an important variable in the explanation of prejudice. For an Italian sample of 355, correlations with measures of blatant and subtle prejudice against migrant people showed social dominance orientation was positively related to blatant prejudice. Persons with less education scored higher on social dominance orientation
Social Dominance Orientation and Prejudice in an Italian Sample
Representation of the Serial Killer on the Italian Internet
The representation of serial killers was examined from the analysis of 317 Web pages in the Italian language to study how the psychological profiles of serial killers are described on the Italian Internet. The correspondence analysis of the content of these Web pages shows that in Italy the serial killer is associated with words such as "monster" and "horror," which suggest and imply psychological perversion and aberrant acts. These traits are pe…
Representation of the Serial Killer on the Italian Internet
Anti-Semitic Prejudice in Adolescence: An Italian Study on Shared Beliefs
A study was conducted in Bologna and Venice on a sample of 427 subjects to verify whether anti-Semitic prejudice is observed in Italy, if it has direct, violent expression (blatant prejudice), or if it assumes less evident forms (subtle prejudice). The sample was chosen to represent levels of contact with the Jewish community to check the contact hypothesis (Bologna for the no-contact condition and Venice for the contact-condition) in groups of d…
Stereotyping Roma people in Italy: IRT models for ambivalent prejudice measurement
Attribution and Categorization Effects in the Representation of Gender Stereotypes
Social stereotypes involve judgments of how typical certain personality traits are of a group. According to the attribution hypothesis, judgments of trait typicality depend on the perceived prevalence of the trait in the target group. According to the categorization hypothesis, such judgments depend on the degree to which a trait is thought to be more or less prevalent in the target group than in a relevant comparison group. A study conducted wit…
Social Representations of the War in Italy during the Russia/Ukraine Conflict
Social representations of the war, anchored in historical experience and cultural values, play a motivational role in justifying collective behavior. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the research delves into the meanings associated with war through a social representation approach. Employing Doise’s sociodynamic approach, researchers identify the semantic field linked with war and analyze its organizing principles, revealing the varia…
On Active Citizenship: Discourses and Language about Youth and Migrants in Italy
The civic and political participation of young people and especially young migrants, who have limited rights of citizenship, is still a significant problem in Italy. Young people struggle to find opportunities and feel excluded from politics: the political agenda tends to see them more as a problem than as a resource. In this article, we illustrate the results of research to understand the dynamics of political and civic participation of young pe…
Anti-Semitic Prejudice in Adolescence: An Italian Study on Shared Beliefs
A study was conducted in Bologna and Venice on a sample of 427 subjects to verify whether anti-Semitic prejudice is observed in Italy, if it has direct, violent expression (blatant prejudice), or if it assumes less evident forms (subtle prejudice). The sample was chosen to represent levels of contact with the Jewish community to check the contact hypothesis (Bologna for the no-contact condition and Venice for the contact-condition) in groups of d…
Representation of the Serial Killer on the Italian Internet
The representation of serial killers was examined from the analysis of 317 Web pages in the Italian language to study how the psychological profiles of serial killers are described on the Italian Internet. The correspondence analysis of the content of these Web pages shows that in Italy the serial killer is associated with words such as "monster" and "horror," which suggest and imply psychological perversion and aberrant acts. These traits are pe…
Representation of the Serial Killer on the Italian Internet
Social Dominance Orientation and Prejudice in an Italian Sample
Social dominance orientation has been proposed as an important variable in the explanation of prejudice. For an Italian sample of 355, correlations with measures of blatant and subtle prejudice against migrant people showed social dominance orientation was positively related to blatant prejudice. Persons with less education scored higher on social dominance orientation
Social Dominance Orientation and Prejudice in an Italian Sample
Attribution and Categorization Effects in the Representation of Gender Stereotypes
Social stereotypes involve judgments of how typical certain personality traits are of a group. According to the attribution hypothesis, judgments of trait typicality depend on the perceived prevalence of the trait in the target group. According to the categorization hypothesis, such judgments depend on the degree to which a trait is thought to be more or less prevalent in the target group than in a relevant comparison group. A study conducted wit…
On Active Citizenship: Discourses and Language about Youth and Migrants in Italy
The civic and political participation of young people and especially young migrants, who have limited rights of citizenship, is still a significant problem in Italy. Young people struggle to find opportunities and feel excluded from politics: the political agenda tends to see them more as a problem than as a resource. In this article, we illustrate the results of research to understand the dynamics of political and civic participation of young pe…
Left–Right Orientation and Electoral Choices: Divergences in the Relationships With Authority and Out-Groups
New political parties and movements have recently grown across Europe. These parties often state their distance from the classic left-right juxtaposition, even if their voters still place themselves in the left-right continuum. The aim of the present research was to focus on the Italian political context and to analyze differences between left of center and right of center self-positioned people on attitudes concerning authority-individual and in…
Stereotyping Roma people in Italy: IRT models for ambivalent prejudice measurement
Attitudes of Heterosexual Men and Women Toward HIV Negative and Positive Gay Men
Attitudes of Italian heterosexual men and women toward gay men, both HIV positive and negative, are poorly investigated. Italian culture is still extremely conservative and provides limited support to the gay community (e.g., lack of same-sex marriage recognition). Consequently, gay men experience social exclusion and disparities. The present study explores the association between homophobia and closeness with sexual orientation and HIV status. 2…
And yet I’m an adult now’. The influence of parental criticism on women’s body satisfaction/dissatisfaction during emerging adulthood
Body dissatisfaction is widely recognized as an important public health concern mainly for women because of its increasing incidence worldwide. The aim of this exploratory study was to test the predictive role of family influence on body satisfaction (BS) among young Italian women, during a decade conceptualized as ‘emerging adulthood’. Instruments designed to assess BS, appearance-focused parental comments, maternal and paternal criticism were a…
Social invisibility and discrimination of Roma people in Italy and Brazil
In everyday debates on topics such as cultural differences, it seems relevant to analyze not only institutional conversations or speeches, but also mass-media communications. The way the media portray social events contributes to the construction of our categories of explanation of the world. The main purpose of this research is to analyze the representations of ‘gypsies’ in news articles published in some of the most important national newspaper…
Human, Animal and Automata Attributions: An Investigation of the Multidimensionality of the Ontologization Process
The ontologization process involves the use of social representation relating to the human–animal binary to classify ingroup and outgroup members. To date, no study has investigated the multidimensional nature (i.e. human, animal and automata) of the ontologizing process via structural equation modelling (SEM). Four hundred and twenty-one Italian participants were asked to attribute 24 positive/negative, human/animal/automata associates to each o…
Social Representations of the War in Italy during the Russia/Ukraine Conflict
Social representations of the war, anchored in historical experience and cultural values, play a motivational role in justifying collective behavior. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the research delves into the meanings associated with war through a social representation approach. Employing Doise’s sociodynamic approach, researchers identify the semantic field linked with war and analyze its organizing principles, revealing the varia…
You're a man, so you're out of place: Reflexive thematic analysis of focus group with Italian teachers and educators
Digital bias in sexuality education: An intersectional analysis of AI responses to simulated Italian adolescents
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used by adolescents to seek information about sexuality, relationships, and well-being. However, little is known about how these systems discursively construct and mediate such interactions. This study examines how three commercial LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) respond to simulated Italian adolescent personas used as analytical probes for algorithmic bias. Drawing on 120 standardized Italian-lang…
War and Terrorism Perceptions a Decade Later: Target Distinction or Ethnic-Cultural Bias
Recent events involving war and terrorism have rekindled the debate about the meaning of such concepts and how people define those actions. Previous research from the perspective of social psychology has suggested that the main criterion for distinguishing acts of war from terrorist actions is the differentiation between military and civilian targets. However, a secondary criterion related to the ethnic-cultural identity of the aggressor has also…
Making the maranza: Youth, class and masculinities in the digital politics of exclusion
This article examines how the figure of the maranza, a recurring and controversial character in Italian digital discourse, operates as a symbolic category through which youth, class and masculinity are negotiated. Adopting a social constructionist perspective, the term maranza circulates primarily as a stereotype attributed to others rather than as a self-claimed identity, functioning as a discursive label through which youth deviance, class exce…
Psychology (13 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (6 works) · Politics (5 works) · Prejudice (legal term (5 works) · Developmental psychology (4 works) · Law (4 works)