Francesca Romana Alparone

• University of Chieti-Pescara

Two studies investigated how facial signals of communion and agency intersect to shape first impressions. Study 1 primarily investigated how enhancing or reducing facial signals of communion or agency affected impressions of these dimensions. Results demonstrated that the manipulation of facial signals of communion affected impressions of both comm...

A board game designed by psychologists and geologists to improve seismic-risk perception is presented. In a within-subjects repeated-measure study, 64 Italian high-school students rated their perception of seismic risk in relation to the hazard, vulnerability and exposure of the area in which they lived, before and after the game. A repeated-measur...

Scientific literature about persuasion has shown that the effectiveness of persuasive communication may depend on the match between the affective or cognitive contents of the message and the affective [(Need for Affect (NFA)] or cognitive [Need for Cognition (NFC)] orientation of the recipient. The present work aims to contribute to studying this e...

Affective and cognitive information conveyed by persuasive stimuli is evaluated and integrated by individuals according to their behavioral predispositions. However, the neurocognitive structure that supports persuasion based on either affective or cognitive content is poorly understood. Here, we examine the neural and behavioral processes supporti...

Trait empathy is an essential personality feature in the intricacy of typical social inclinations of individuals. Empathy is likely supported by multilevel neuronal network functioning, whereas local topological properties determine network integrity. In the present functional MRI study (N=116), we aimed to trace empathic traits to the intrinsic br...

Trait empathy is an essential personality feature in the intricacy of typical social inclinations of individuals. Empathy is likely supported by multilevel neuronal network functioning, whereas local topological properties determine network integrity. In the present functional MRI study (N = 116), we aimed to trace empathic traits to the intrinsic...

Chatbots represent a viable interaction layer between online retailers and customers, however, when it comes to online purchases in the form of conversational commerce, customers’ resistance could turn out to be a big challenge for marketers. This study provides a deeper understanding of how consumers perceive chatbots and their intention to use th...

Research has yet to explore the spread of chatbots into the food service delivery sector and its impact on the customer’s experience, especially in a moment where internet seems to be the tool to tap needs associated with being physically apart. In order to fill this gap, the present study addresses the implications that chatbots’ interaction style...

Meshing with the way in which young consumers socially interact, chatbots represent a key factor to address business efforts in enhancing the effectiveness of digital strategies. The conversational aspect of the human-chatbot interaction increases the necessity for this technology to present social behaviours typical of human-human conversations. T...

Meshing with the way in which young consumers socially interact, chatbots represent a key factor to address business efforts in enhancing the effectiveness of digital strategies. The conversational aspect of the human-chatbot interaction increases the necessity for this technology to present social behaviours typical of human-human conversations. T...

The present study investigates the neural pathways underlying individual susceptibility to affective or cognitive information in persuasive communication, also known as the structural matching effect. Expanding on the presumed involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC) in persuasion, we hypothesized that the vMPFC contributes to the...

Ostracism is a painful experience, to the point that even observing ostracism hurts. We extend research on vicarious ostracism by investigating how observers subsequently behave and whether this is driven by intrapersonal feelings (need satisfaction) and/or interpersonal impressions. Sixty-six participants observed either ostracism or inclusion in...

Literature shows that concern for personal reputation varies as a function of both individual and contextual factors, with entitativity of the group to which a person belongs emerging as a key antecedent of indi-vidual's concern for personal reputation. The present research focuses on a further antecedent of the phenomenon, that is, accountability...

Writing about a past traumatic experience has been repeatedly associated with improvements in health and psychological wellbeing. According to the cognitive changing theory, one explanation of these beneficial effects is the process of the active reappraisal of the event, marked by changes in cognitive linguistic indicators. An experiment examined...

The ability to form shared task representations is considered a keystone of social cognition. It remains, however, contentious if, and to what extent, social categorization impacts on shared representations. In the present study, we address the possibility of the modulation of action co-representation by social categorization, such as group members...

The research focused on Group Based Resiliency (GBR), the perception of ingroup's ability to positively deal with contextual threats. Based on the uncertainty reduction theory, we advanced that GBR contributes to prevent negative effects of threats to the ingroup. We successfully tested a SEM in which when the ingroup is presented as resilient a co...

Individuals often hold ambivalent attitudes (i.e., positive and negative attitudes at the same time) toward groups and social categories. The aim of the present research was to examine the differential effects of affective and cognitive dimensions of ambivalence on the (amplification of) responses towards a minority group. We asked 188 students fro...

Not all low status groups are protected to the same extent by the fairness norm. With the present research study, we aimed to examine (a) to what degree members of two differently protected groups of immigrants living in Italy perceived group discrimination, (b) the attitude that they held towards their own group (vs. Italians), and (c) the relatio...

In the past 50 years, a marked reduction has occurred in European and North American children's freedom of movement and outdoor play. Using a structural equation model, the present study investigates the interaction between personal, environmental, and psychosocial factors that affect children's independent mobility. The study involved 313 mothers...

We examined how members of a low status group react to a social identity threat. We propose that expressing an ambivalent evaluation toward the ingroup may represent a way to manage such a threatening situation. For this study, 131 undergraduates’ identification with Italians was assessed. Participants were divided into groups, according to a situa...

The present research deals with low status group members reacting to a social identity threat. According to previous insights, we proposed and found that expressing an ambivalent evaluation toward the ingroup-an evaluation which contains both positive and negative aspects-may represent a way to manage such a threatening situation, particularly when...

Previous research on stereotype threat in children suggests that making gender identity salient disrupts girls' math performance at as early as 5 to 7 years of age. The present study (n = 124) tested the hypothesis that parents' endorsement of gender stereotypes about math moderates girls' susceptibility to stereotype threat. Results confirmed that...

A semi structured interview was submitted to 251 7-12 years old children�s mothers. 80 of them live in a house with internal courtyard, 80 in a house situated in a private street and 81 near a park. The interview concerns some aspects of the mother�s neighbourhood perception, the urban mobility and the game habits of their children. The courtyard i...

The aim of this research was to determine the outcomes of the "We go to school alone" program in two Districts of Rome through a longitudinal study involving 392 children (mean age = 8.37 years) and 270 parents. The outcomes of the program in the two Districts were very different. Only one resulted in an increase in children's autonomous mobility o...

Confirmatory bias in argumentation—i.e., the tendency to generate arguments that support one’s own claims, rather than rebuttals that challenge alternative standpoints—is a widespread tendency that can be harmful to the quality of argumentation. In the present study we hypothesized that, depending on issue relevance to the targets, majority and min...

We conducted two studies to examine the role of the social norm of fairness on cognitive (beliefs and judgments) and affective (emotions and feelings) ambivalence in an intergroup context of evaluation. As predicted, we found that ambivalence toward the ingroup is constantly higher in the cognitive dimension than in the affective dimension. Instead...

An important factor that limits children's autonomy outdoors is parental perception of social danger and traffic danger. To obtain quantitative instruments for these dimensions, this work aimed to explore the validity and reliability of three scales. Two of them describe, respectively, problematic aspects of the area of residence linked to traffic...

The first aim of this study was to investigate whether demographic characteristics of children (i.e. age, sex, birth order), mothers' psychosocial characteristics (i.e. fear of crime, neighbourhood relations, sense of community, perceived risk of traffic) and environmental factors (i.e. living in a new/old neighbourhood, in a building with a condom...