Maria Brambilla
Biographic Data
| ID | 210195 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Brambilla |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Brambilla |
| SIGNATURE | BRAMBILLA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Milano-Bicocca |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4774-3309 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 303 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 54 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Examining psychological effects of demagogic discourse on perceived threat and political intolerance
Despite warnings about the increasingly confrontational tone of political discourse, little research has experimentally examined the psychological impact that different political styles may have. We seek to fill this lacuna by investigating whether exposure to a type of political discourse labelled as ‘demagogic discourse’ fosters anti-democratic stances by threatening values and lowering political tolerance. To this end, we conducted three exper…
“If Immoral Then Unable”: Asymmetric Generalizations in Social Judgment
Morality and ability are two key dimensions of social judgment. Across four experiments (total N = 1,418, three preregistered), we examined how information about one dimension shapes impressions in the other. In Experiment 1, participants generated positive and negative behaviors related to either morality or ability and then evaluated each behavior on the other dimension. Negative moral behaviors led to stronger inferences of low ability than ne…
Multimodal Cues to Change Your Mind: The Intertwining of Faces, Voices, and Behaviors in Impression Updating
Impressions of others are formed from multiple cues, including facial features, vocal tone, and behavioral descriptions, and may be subject to multimodal updating. Four experiments ( N = 803) examined the influence of a target’s face or voice on impression updating. Experiments 1a-1b examined whether behavior-based impressions are susceptible to updating by incongruent information conveyed by the target’s face, voice, or behavior (within-particip…
Alliances for social change: Linking majority-group cultural adoption to collective action intentions
Repeating Statements Increases Source Credibility
Repeating statements increases their perceived truth. Yet, whether repetition enhances the credibility of their source remains unexplored. We examined a repetition-induced source credibility effect in four preregistered experiments. In Experiment 1 ( N = 90), we exposed participants to 20 unrepeated and 20 repeated statements communicated by 40 individuals. Repetition significantly increased both statement truth and source credibility. Experiment…
Facial Impressions Are Not Set in Stone: Voice-Driven Changes in Facial Representations Obtained via Reverse Correlation
Research has shown that face-based impressions change when integrated with valence-inconsistent voices. Yet, it remains unclear whether listening to a voice also alters mental representations of faces. We tested this possibility using reverse correlation (RC) in two preregistered experiments with Italian Prolific users. In Experiment 1 ( N = 61), participants formed impressions based on negative behavioral statements about a target person (Time 1…
Continuity and change
The European Journal of Social Psychology (EJSP) has been a key outlet for social psychological research across the world for more than 50 years. The myriad changes that have occurred in the last half-century continue to present the field, and EJSP more specifically, with a number of opportunities and challenges. In terms of opportunities, new social and political environments continue to spur innovation in topics, research practices and in the s…
Face–context integration and trustworthiness evaluation
Judgements of trustworthiness based on facial features have mainly been investigated by presenting faces in isolation. However, real-life situations often involve contextual cues. Here, we review our work showing that judgements of trustworthiness from faces are influenced by contextual threat. Individuals are judged as less trustworthy when their faces are surrounded by threatening, as opposed to neutral or merely negative, contexts. Delving int…
Acknowledging that Men are Moral and Harmed by Gender Stereotypes Increases Men’s Willingness to Engage in Collective Action on Behalf of Women
The rise of far-right parties with antifeminist sentiments constitutes a new challenge in the path to gender equality. Here, we aim to identify strategies to promote men’s acceptance of social change towards equality. Thus, we first examined key concerns about gender equality held by far-right supporters through a discourse analysis of 120 men. The findings revealed a focus on male victimhood, the negation and only partial recognition of inequali…
All that meets the eye: The contribution of reward processing and pupil mimicry on pupillary reactions to facial trustworthiness
Not Just About Faces in Context: Face–Context Relation Moderates the Impact of Contextual Threat on Facial Trustworthiness
Recent work showed that the attribution of facial trustworthiness can be influenced by the surrounding context in which a face is embedded: contexts that convey threat make faces less trustworthy. In four studies ( N = 388, three preregistered) we tested whether face–context integration is influenced by how faces and contexts are encoded relationally. In Experiments 1a to 1c, face–context integration was stronger when threatening stimuli were att…
When faces and voices come together: Face width‐to‐height ratio and voice pitch contribute independently to social perception
Prior research has shown that the face's width‐to‐height ratio (fWHR) and the voice's pitch influence social perception. Yet, the relative contribution of either cue has been largely unexplored. We examined the simultaneous effects of fWHR and pitch on social evaluations. Experiment 1 ( N = 102) tested how such cues shaped global impressions. Experiment 2 ( N = 121) tested fWHR and pitch's effect on behavioural affiliative intentions, framing soc…
Humanity at first sight: Exploring the relationship between others' pupil size and ascriptions of humanity
Social targets' eyes are a rich source of information: partners with dilated and constricted pupils are perceived positively and negatively, respectively. Here, we tested whether observed pupil size influences the ascription of humanity. In Study 1 (n = 198) participants were asked to attribute positive uniquely human and non-uniquely human traits to ingroup (i.e., university students), derogated (i.e., homeless people) and non-derogated (i.e., D…
The “Happy Face Killer” in the eyes of the beholder: Relational encoding of facial emotions in context influences trustworthiness attributions
Research on face perception has established that faces surrounded by threatening contexts are perceived as less trustworthy. Moreover, recent studies revealed that such a face-context integration effect is moderated by the nature of the relational qualifier connecting the face and the context: presenting a face as belonging to either the perpetrator or the victim of the threatening context changes its perceived trustworthiness. Here, we asked whe…
Untrusted under threat: On the superior bond between trustworthiness and threat in face-context integration
The face is a powerful source to make inferences about one’s trustworthiness. Recent studies demonstrated that facial trustworthiness is influenced by the level of threat conveyed by the visual scene in which faces are embedded: untrustworthy-looking faces are more likely judged as untrustworthy when shown in threatening scenes. Here, we explore whether this face-context congruency effect is specific to the negative pole of the threat-trust domai…
Heroes or traitors? Perception of whistleblowers depends on the self-relevance of the group being reported
Whistleblowing is the action by which members of an organization report misconduct that occurs within their group to other persons inside or outside the organization. In the present research, we examined perception of whistleblowers in terms of global impressions, emotions, and behavioural intentions. Study 1 reveals negative reactions to whistleblowers, while Study 2 shows positive reactions to whistleblowers. To reconcile these findings, Study …
Fragile Heterosexuality: A Cross-cultural Study Between Germany and Italy
Prior research in the UK and the USA found that heterosexual identity was perceived as more easily compromised than gay identity: a finding dubbed the “Fragile Heterosexuality” effect. However, there is as yet no evidence that this effect occurs outside the USA and UK. With representative samples from Germany ( N = 1236) and Italy ( N = 1249), we investigated the fragile heterosexuality effect using participants’ agreement with gender-neutral sta…
Awareness of the psychological bias of naïve realism as a subtle strategy for improving stereotypes towards Moroccan women in Spain
The present research explored whether the exposure to the psychological bias of naïve realism (i.e., the conviction that one’s own views are objective, and the other’s views are biased) could promote stereotype change along the dimensions of morality, sociability, and competence. Due to their double discrimination, we considered Moroccan women living in Spain as the target group. Participants (307 Spaniards; Mage = 35.92, SD = 13.37; 61.6% women)…
Trust predicts Covid-19 prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions in 23 countries
The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals’ well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one’s own health. Instead, i…
Unpacking negative attitudes towards Moroccans: The interactive effect of ethnicity and gender on perceived morality
Research on stereotyping has mainly focused on single social categories such as ethnicity or gender. Extending prior work, here we analyse the effects of the intersection of ethnicity and gender on stereotyping considering the descriptive and prescriptive components of positive and negative stereotype dimensions of morality, sociability and competence. We also examine these interaction effects on the stereotypes–emotions–facilitation behavioural …
Thermoluminescence Analysis of Bricks from the so-called Arch of Ali Shah
The application of Thermally (TL) and Optically (OSL) Stimulated Luminescence on bricks used as building material can answer questions regarding the chronology of historical buildings. The remarkable historical reports of the “largest ever made brick vault” known as the Arch of Ali Shah (14th century) invoke the image of a gigantic structure adjoining the u-shaped brick monument in Tabriz. However, there is new scientific data that has led us to …
Active and Passive Facilitation Tendencies at Work Towards Sexy and Professional Women: The Role of Stereotypes and Emotions
Stereotypes have important social consequences, such as promoting female discrimination in the workplace, which depends on how women are categorized. Extending prior work, here we analyze how two important female subgroups, women who are categorized as professional or sexy women, are evaluated on key dimensions of stereotype content (morality, sociability, and competence), positive and negative emotions, and facilitation behavioral tendencies (ac…
Tolerance towards difference: Adaptation and psychometric properties of the Spanish version of a new measure of tolerance and sex-moderated relations with prejudice
The present research aims at adapting to the Spanish context and language a measure of tolerance toward diversity recently developed, at analyzing its psychometric properties, and at examining the moderating effect of participants’ sex on the relations between tolerance and prejudice. We conducted two studies considering two Spanish samples taken from the general population. In Study 1 (N = 586; 70.5 % females; Mage = 37.77, SD = 12.34) we confir…
Changing impressions in competence-oriented domains: The primacy of morality endures
Stereotypes and Dehumanization: The Relationship Between the Dual Models of Dehumanization and Stereotype Content
Across two studies, we tested the relationship between the stereotype dimensions of sociability, morality, and competence and the two dimensions of humanness (human nature and human uniqueness). Study 1 considered real groups and revealed that sociability had greater power than morality in predicting human nature. For some groups, sociability also trumped competence in predicting human nature. By contrast, the attribution of human uniqueness was …
Looking for honesty: The primary role of morality (vs. sociability and competence) in information gathering
Research on the two fundamental dimensions of social judgment, namely warmth and competence, has shown that warmth has a primary and a dominant role in information gathering about others. In two studies we examined whether the sociability and morality components of warmth play distinct roles in such a process. Study 1 ( N = 60) investigated which traits were mostly selected when forming impressions about others. The results showed that, regardles…
Morality and intergroup relations: Threats to safety and group image predict the desire to interact with outgroup and ingroup members
Culture and the distinctiveness motive: Constructing identity in individualistic and collectivistic contexts
The motive to attain a distinctive identity is sometimes thought to be stronger in, or even specific to, those socialized into individualistic cultures. Using data from 4,751 participants in 21 cultural groups (18 nations and 3 regions), we tested this prediction against our alternative view that culture would moderate the ways in which people achieve feelings of distinctiveness, rather than influence the strength of their motivation to do so. We…
Changing impressions: Moral character dominates impression updating
Enhancing moral virtues: Increased perceived outgroup morality as a mediator of intergroup contact effects
Research has shown that intergroup contact is one of the most powerful approaches for improving outgroup attitudes. Further, it has been revealed that contact exerts its effects on prejudice reduction mostly by inducing positive affective processes. The present study ( N = 146) investigated whether stereotype content enhancement along the core dimensions of competence, sociability, and morality might represent a basic cognitive mechanism driving …
Changing stereotype content through mental imagery: Imagining intergroup contact promotes stereotype change
Research has recently shown that imagining intergroup contact can reduce hostility toward outgroups. The present experiment explored whether imagining intergroup contact leads to more positive perceptions of outgroups differentially stereotyped on the two fundamental dimensions of social perception, namely warmth and competence. Depending on the experimental condition, participants ( N = 123) imagined either an intergroup encounter with an outgro…
Contextualism as an Important Facet of Individualism-Collectivism: Personhood Beliefs Across 37 National Groups
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultural collectivism. A brief measure was developed and refined across 19 nations (Study 1: N = 5,241), sh…
The influence of visual context on the evaluation of facial trustworthiness
Strengthening Purity: Moral Purity as a Mediator of Direct and Extended Cross-Group Friendships on Sexual Prejudice
The present research investigated whether enhanced perceptions of moral purity drive the effects of intergroup cross-group friendships on the intentions to interact with homosexuals. High-school students (N = 639) reported their direct and extended cross-group friendships with homosexuals as well as their beliefs regarding the moral character of the sexual minority. Participants further reported their desire to interact with homosexuals in the fu…
Status and Cooperation Shape Lesbian Stereotypes: Testing Predictions from the Stereotype Content Model
Research on perceptions of homosexuals implicitly assumes that individuals think about lesbians as an undifferentiated group. By contrast, this paper investigated the stereotypes of the overall category as well as of different subgroups of lesbians within the frame of the stereotype content model (SCM). Participants (N = 70) rated the overall category and four subgroups on perceived warmth, competence, status, and interdependence (cooperative vs.…
Autonomous Versus Controlled Religiosity: Family and Group Antecedents
Self-determination theory distinguishes between identified and introjected internalization of religious practices, positing that the former is experienced as autonomous, whereas the latter is experienced as controlling. A study of Italian Catholic youth showed that identified internalization was predicted by (a) parents' behaviors reflecting basic autonomy support (BAS; behaviors involving perspective taking, choice-provision, and control-minimiz…
The Effects of Status on Perceived Warmth and Competence: Malleability of the Relationship Between Status and Stereotype Content
Research has shown that perceived group status positively predicts competence stereotypes but does not positively predict warmth stereotypes. The present study identified circumstances in which group status positively predicts both warmth and competence judgments. Students (N = 86) rated one of two groups (psychologists vs. engineers) presented as either being low or high in social status on warmth and competence. Results showed that status posit…
Outgroup morality perceptions mediate secondary transfer effects from direct and extended contact: Evidence from majority and minority group members
The secondary transfer effect (STE), defined as contact with a primary outgroup improving attitudes towards a secondary outgroup uninvolved in contact, has mainly been studied with reference to direct contact and considering attitude generalization as the main mediating mechanism. Using a majority (422 Italians) and minority (130 immigrants) adolescent sample from high schools in Italy, we examined outgroup morality perceptions as a new mediating…
If I Am Straight You Are Askew”: Labelling Heterosexuals as Straight Worsen Gay Men’s Perception
A robust stream of research has shown the detrimental influence of slurs and derogatory epithets on attitudes toward minority groups. Extending prior work, we explored the influence of positive labels ascribed to the majority group on the evaluation of the minority group. Specifically, three studies tested the possibility that the label "straight," generally linked with the concept of morality, would promote a negative evaluation of gay men. Stud…
The honest mirror: Morality as a moderator of spontaneous behavioral mimicry
Two studies examined whether morality‐related information has a greater impact than sociability‐ or competence‐related information upon the spontaneous mimicry of an interaction partner. Participants were video recorded during an interaction with a confederate previously presented as moral versus lacking morality, or sociable versus lacking sociability (Study 1), or competent versus lacking competence (Study 2). Two coders rated the extent to whi…
Forgiving the terrorists of the Years of Lead in Italy: The role of restorative justice beliefs and sociocognitive determinants
The period of political terrorism named the “Years of Lead” ( Anni di Piombo) started in Italy at the end of the 1960s and lasted until the late 1980s. The social wounds of this bloody time are still not healed, and there is a social debate about the opportunity to concede forgiveness to those responsible for those crimes. Drawing from the intergroup forgiveness literature, we tested a model explaining under which conditions forgiveness towards t…
Equity in the City: On Measuring Urban (Ine)quality of Life
In economic literature, the quality of life (QoL) in a city is usually assessed through the standard revealed-preference approach, which defines a QoL index as the monetary value of urban amenities. This paper proposes an innovative methodology to measure urban QoL when equity concerns arise. The standard approach is extended by introducing preferences for even accessibility to amenities throughout the city into the QoL assessment. The QoL index …
Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: Macro-Level Symbolic Threat Increases Prejudice Against Gay Men
Two studies examined the impact of macrolevel symbolic threat on intergroup attitudes. In Study 1 (N = 71), participants exposed to a macrosymbolic threat (vs. nonsymbolic threat and neutral topic) reported less support toward social policies concerning gay men, an outgroup whose stereotypes implies a threat to values, but not toward welfare recipients, a social group whose stereotypes do not imply a threat to values. Study 2 (N = 78) showed that…
Heroes or traitors? Perception of whistleblowers depends on the self-relevance of the group being reported
Whistleblowing is the action by which members of an organization report misconduct that occurs within their group to other persons inside or outside the organization. In the present research, we examined perception of whistleblowers in terms of global impressions, emotions, and behavioural intentions. Study 1 reveals negative reactions to whistleblowers, while Study 2 shows positive reactions to whistleblowers. To reconcile these findings, Study …
Changing impressions in competence-oriented domains: The primacy of morality endures
Verification of ingroup morality promotes willingness to participate in collective action for immigrants’ rights
Three experiments tested whether verification of ingroup morality increases engagement in collective action in favor of immigrants’ rights. To that end, participants were exposed to (a) verifying, (b) negatively discrepant, (c) enhancing, or (d) no feedback about the morality of their group in general (Studies 1–2) or specifically in matters of corruption (Study 3). Results show that those who received verifying feedback of their group’s morality…
The Insidious Effects of Sexual Stereotypes in Clinical Practice
The present study investigated the influence of sexual stereotyping on the diagnostic impressions and treatment expectations of gay and straight male patients. Italian male, straight, licensed psychotherapists (N = 152) were presented with clinical vignettes that described a gay (versus straight) male patient reporting either a straight-stereotypical disorder (i.e., rage dyscontrol) or a gay-stereotypical disorder (i.e., sexual compulsivity). Res…
Acknowledging that Men are Moral and Harmed by Gender Stereotypes Increases Men’s Willingness to Engage in Collective Action on Behalf of Women
The rise of far-right parties with antifeminist sentiments constitutes a new challenge in the path to gender equality. Here, we aim to identify strategies to promote men’s acceptance of social change towards equality. Thus, we first examined key concerns about gender equality held by far-right supporters through a discourse analysis of 120 men. The findings revealed a focus on male victimhood, the negation and only partial recognition of inequali…
Humanity at first sight: Exploring the relationship between others' pupil size and ascriptions of humanity
Social targets' eyes are a rich source of information: partners with dilated and constricted pupils are perceived positively and negatively, respectively. Here, we tested whether observed pupil size influences the ascription of humanity. In Study 1 (n = 198) participants were asked to attribute positive uniquely human and non-uniquely human traits to ingroup (i.e., university students), derogated (i.e., homeless people) and non-derogated (i.e., D…
Awareness of the psychological bias of naïve realism as a subtle strategy for improving stereotypes towards Moroccan women in Spain
The present research explored whether the exposure to the psychological bias of naïve realism (i.e., the conviction that one’s own views are objective, and the other’s views are biased) could promote stereotype change along the dimensions of morality, sociability, and competence. Due to their double discrimination, we considered Moroccan women living in Spain as the target group. Participants (307 Spaniards; Mage = 35.92, SD = 13.37; 61.6% women)…
The Effects of Status on Perceived Warmth and Competence: Malleability of the Relationship Between Status and Stereotype Content
Research has shown that perceived group status positively predicts competence stereotypes but does not positively predict warmth stereotypes. The present study identified circumstances in which group status positively predicts both warmth and competence judgments. Students (N = 86) rated one of two groups (psychologists vs. engineers) presented as either being low or high in social status on warmth and competence. Results showed that status posit…
Changing stereotype content through mental imagery: Imagining intergroup contact promotes stereotype change
Research has recently shown that imagining intergroup contact can reduce hostility toward outgroups. The present experiment explored whether imagining intergroup contact leads to more positive perceptions of outgroups differentially stereotyped on the two fundamental dimensions of social perception, namely warmth and competence. Depending on the experimental condition, participants ( N = 123) imagined either an intergroup encounter with an outgro…
Looking for honesty: The primary role of morality (vs. sociability and competence) in information gathering
Research on the two fundamental dimensions of social judgment, namely warmth and competence, has shown that warmth has a primary and a dominant role in information gathering about others. In two studies we examined whether the sociability and morality components of warmth play distinct roles in such a process. Study 1 ( N = 60) investigated which traits were mostly selected when forming impressions about others. The results showed that, regardles…
Status and Cooperation Shape Lesbian Stereotypes: Testing Predictions from the Stereotype Content Model
Research on perceptions of homosexuals implicitly assumes that individuals think about lesbians as an undifferentiated group. By contrast, this paper investigated the stereotypes of the overall category as well as of different subgroups of lesbians within the frame of the stereotype content model (SCM). Participants (N = 70) rated the overall category and four subgroups on perceived warmth, competence, status, and interdependence (cooperative vs.…
You want to give a good impression? Be honest! Moral traits dominate group impression formation
Research has shown that warmth and competence are core dimensions on which perceivers judge others and that warmth has a primary role at various phases of impression formation. Three studies explored whether the two components of warmth (i.e., sociability and morality) have distinct roles in predicting the global impression of social groups. In Study 1 ( N = 105) and Study 2 ( N = 112), participants read an immigration scenario depicting an unfam…
Culture and the distinctiveness motive: Constructing identity in individualistic and collectivistic contexts
The motive to attain a distinctive identity is sometimes thought to be stronger in, or even specific to, those socialized into individualistic cultures. Using data from 4,751 participants in 21 cultural groups (18 nations and 3 regions), we tested this prediction against our alternative view that culture would moderate the ways in which people achieve feelings of distinctiveness, rather than influence the strength of their motivation to do so. We…
Enhancing moral virtues: Increased perceived outgroup morality as a mediator of intergroup contact effects
Research has shown that intergroup contact is one of the most powerful approaches for improving outgroup attitudes. Further, it has been revealed that contact exerts its effects on prejudice reduction mostly by inducing positive affective processes. The present study ( N = 146) investigated whether stereotype content enhancement along the core dimensions of competence, sociability, and morality might represent a basic cognitive mechanism driving …
Equity in the City: On Measuring Urban (Ine)quality of Life
In economic literature, the quality of life (QoL) in a city is usually assessed through the standard revealed-preference approach, which defines a QoL index as the monetary value of urban amenities. This paper proposes an innovative methodology to measure urban QoL when equity concerns arise. The standard approach is extended by introducing preferences for even accessibility to amenities throughout the city into the QoL assessment. The QoL index …
Morality and intergroup relations: Threats to safety and group image predict the desire to interact with outgroup and ingroup members
Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: Macro-Level Symbolic Threat Increases Prejudice Against Gay Men
Two studies examined the impact of macrolevel symbolic threat on intergroup attitudes. In Study 1 (N = 71), participants exposed to a macrosymbolic threat (vs. nonsymbolic threat and neutral topic) reported less support toward social policies concerning gay men, an outgroup whose stereotypes implies a threat to values, but not toward welfare recipients, a social group whose stereotypes do not imply a threat to values. Study 2 (N = 78) showed that…
When Mother Earth Rises Up: Anthropomorphizing Nature Reduces Support for Natural Disaster Victims
Anthropomorphization is the tendency to ascribe humanlike features and mental states, such as free will and consciousness, to nonhuman beings or inanimate agents. Two studies investigated the consequences of the anthropomorphization of nature on people's willingness to help victims of natural disasters. Study 1 (N = 96) showed that the humanization of nature correlated negatively with willingness to help natural disaster victims. Study 2 (N = 52)…
Contextualism as an Important Facet of Individualism-Collectivism: Personhood Beliefs Across 37 National Groups
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultural collectivism. A brief measure was developed and refined across 19 nations (Study 1: N = 5,241), sh…
On the Importance of Being Moral: The Distinctive Role of Morality in Social Judgment
Agency and communion are the core dimensions of social judgment as they indicate whether someone's intentions toward us are beneficial or harmful (i.e., communion), and whether they have the ability to fulfil their intentions (i.e., agency). Recent advances have demonstrated that communion encompasses both sociability (e.g., friendliness, likeability) and morality (e.g., honesty, trustworthiness) characteristics. In this article, we review the em…
Autonomous Versus Controlled Religiosity: Family and Group Antecedents
Self-determination theory distinguishes between identified and introjected internalization of religious practices, positing that the former is experienced as autonomous, whereas the latter is experienced as controlling. A study of Italian Catholic youth showed that identified internalization was predicted by (a) parents' behaviors reflecting basic autonomy support (BAS; behaviors involving perspective taking, choice-provision, and control-minimiz…
Forgiving the terrorists of the Years of Lead in Italy: The role of restorative justice beliefs and sociocognitive determinants
The period of political terrorism named the “Years of Lead” ( Anni di Piombo) started in Italy at the end of the 1960s and lasted until the late 1980s. The social wounds of this bloody time are still not healed, and there is a social debate about the opportunity to concede forgiveness to those responsible for those crimes. Drawing from the intergroup forgiveness literature, we tested a model explaining under which conditions forgiveness towards t…
Beyond the ‘east–west’ dichotomy: Global variation in cultural models of selfhood.
Markus and Kitayama's (1991) theory of independent and interdependent self-construals had a major influence on social, personality, and developmental psychology by highlighting the role of culture in psychological processes. However, research has relied excessively on contrasts between North American and East Asian samples, and commonly used self-report measures of independence and interdependence frequently fail to show predicted cultural differ…
Being oneself through time: Bases of self-continuity across 55 cultures
Self-continuity – the sense that one’s past, present, and future are meaningfully connected – is considered a defining feature of personal identity. However, bases of self-continuity may depend on cultural beliefs about personhood. In multilevel analyses of data from 7287 adults from 55 cultural groups in 33 nations, we tested a new tripartite theoretical model of bases of self-continuity. As expected, perceptions of stability, sense of narrative…
Self‐image and schadenfreude: Pleasure at others' misfortune enhances satisfaction of basic human needs
The present research tested whether observing the failure of another individual and experiencing schadenfreude (i.e., pleasure at others' misfortune) enhance the satisfaction of basic psychological needs in terms of self‐esteem, control, belongingness, and meaningful existence. Considering hypothetical scenarios (Experiments 1 and 4), real‐life experiences (Experiment 2), and ostensibly real interactions (Experiment 3), four experiments revealed …
The Insidious Effects of Sexual Stereotypes in Clinical Practice
The present study investigated the influence of sexual stereotyping on the diagnostic impressions and treatment expectations of gay and straight male patients. Italian male, straight, licensed psychotherapists (N = 152) were presented with clinical vignettes that described a gay (versus straight) male patient reporting either a straight-stereotypical disorder (i.e., rage dyscontrol) or a gay-stereotypical disorder (i.e., sexual compulsivity). Res…
Strengthening Purity: Moral Purity as a Mediator of Direct and Extended Cross-Group Friendships on Sexual Prejudice
The present research investigated whether enhanced perceptions of moral purity drive the effects of intergroup cross-group friendships on the intentions to interact with homosexuals. High-school students (N = 639) reported their direct and extended cross-group friendships with homosexuals as well as their beliefs regarding the moral character of the sexual minority. Participants further reported their desire to interact with homosexuals in the fu…
Straight to heaven: Rectitude as spatial representation of morality
Abundant literature in cognitive sciences has shown that morality is grounded in bodily experience. Four studies tested the perceptual association between the spatial dimension of straightness and the abstract concept of morality. Study 1 ( n = 61) employed an IAT and revealed an association between straight figures and moral related words. Study 2 ( n = 83) employed a similar paradigm and further revealed that the effect we found in Study 1 cann…
The influence of visual context on the evaluation of facial trustworthiness
Outgroup morality perceptions mediate secondary transfer effects from direct and extended contact: Evidence from majority and minority group members
The secondary transfer effect (STE), defined as contact with a primary outgroup improving attitudes towards a secondary outgroup uninvolved in contact, has mainly been studied with reference to direct contact and considering attitude generalization as the main mediating mechanism. Using a majority (422 Italians) and minority (130 immigrants) adolescent sample from high schools in Italy, we examined outgroup morality perceptions as a new mediating…
Changing impressions: Moral character dominates impression updating
Immigration: An invasion or an opportunity to the country. The effect of real news frames of immigration on ethnic attitudes ( Inmigración: invasión u oportunidad para el país. El efecto del enfoque d…
How immigration is framed in the media can influence ethnic attitudes and support for anti-immigration policies. This work analysed the effects of media representations about immigration (as an invasion or an opportunity for the economic growth of the country) on the perceptions (i.e., perceived [im]morality, realistic and symbolic threat) and emotions of anger and fear of Spanish (Study 1) and Italian participants (Study 2), and their willingnes…
Psychology (48 works) · Social Psychology (47 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (33 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (27 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (22 works) · Perception (22 works) · Morality (19 works) · Developmental psychology (17 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (14 works)