Guido Alessandri

Sapienza University of Rome | la sapienza · Department of Psychology

Self-determination theory (SDT) represents one of the most comprehensive theories of human motivation and psychological growth. SDT theorizes how social contexts may sustain or inhibit human functioning, depending on their ability to fulfill individuals’ basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness). Although there are some revi...

The present study examined the longitudinal relations among work self‐efficacy beliefs, job performance and career success, defined as objective career advancements. We argued that job performance would mediate both the influence of worker's self‐efficacy beliefs on career success and the influence of career success on subsequent self‐efficacy beli...

(1) Background: Physical activity is known to promote health and psychological well-being in older adults, yet global inactivity rates in this population remain high. Among the factors associated with physical activity, self-efficacy for exercise represents a key predictor for developing effective interventions in older adults. This study aimed to...

Vagally mediated heart rate variability (HRV) is a measure of parasympathetic modulation of the heart, which is considered an index of the ability to regulate emotional arousal attuned to environmental demands. The present study explores the association between HRV and exhaustion—the core symptom of burnout. Based on the multilevel model of employe...

The goal was to create a brief temperament inventory grounded in the Regulative Theory of Temperament (FCB-TMI-CC), with a user-friendly, online applicability for studies in different cultures. As the regulative role of temperament is strongly revealed under meaningful stress, the study was planned within the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. To ensur...

Psychological Capital (PsyCap) represents an individual's positive and resourceful state, defined by high levels of self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency. Since its inception, extensive research has focused on exploring the factors influencing and outcomes associated with PsyCap within organizational contexts. Consequently, there has been a...

This study aims to clarify what are the short-term effects of customerincivility on targeted employees’ self-esteem and job satisfaction. Wehypothesised that daily customer incivility reported at the end of theprevious workday would predict decreases in next-day morningemployees’ self-esteem. In turn, lowered self-esteem would berelated to lower jo...

Introduction Older sexual minority people meet a double stigma in our society related to their sexual identity and chronological age. The present study explores how experiences of discrimination and prejudice, coming out, and personal resiliency influence physical health of older lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults. Methods Respondents were re...

Technological progress is increasing rapidly, and keeping up is particularly challenging for older adults. Thus, adapting technological innovations to human needs has become urgent. The first step toward this aim is to understand how people conceptualize technology. Here, we asked 54 younger and 54 older adults to perform a Go/No-Go, a rating, and...

Objectives The present pre‐registered study examined the reciprocal day‐to‐day associations between global self‐esteem and self‐concept clarity and their incremental validity with respect to daily life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Methods We used intensive longitudinal data from 153 adult workers (45.1% women), over a period...

The link between neuroticism and the various indicators of daily cortisol fluctuations is frequently noted to be inconsistent or lacking in strength. The current study aimed to investigate the predictive capacity of both self-assessment and external evaluations of neuroticism, along with their interaction, on multiple indices of diurnal cortisol va...

Introduction The present study represents the first systematic review summarizing existing publications on older sexual and gender minority (LGBT+) people's engagement with physical activity (PA) aged 65 and over. Methods Relevant articles were systematically searched in four scientific databases (i.e., PsychArticles, PsychInfo, Pubmed, and Web of...

With the global population of older adults projected to double to 2.1 billion by 2050, it becomes crucial to promote healthy aging to alleviate the associated disease burden. In this context, technology, particularly virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), has garnered attention for its potential to augment physical activity in older adult...

Background Positivity (POS) indicates the proclivity to see life and experiences in a positive light. There is limited research on its effects on individuals with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSD). Very little is known about the relationship between POS and daily activities in people with SSD. Aim The study aims to compare the POS rated by pa...

Self-esteem represents one of the most important personal resources for workers. However, the value of different forms of self-esteem (i.e., global vs. organization-specific) for work outcomes and their reciprocal associations over time have yet to be examined. This preregistered study examined (1) longitudinal reciprocal relations between global a...

Background: Despite the widely recognized benefits of physical activity for preventing physical and cognitive decline during aging, global estimates indicate that most older adults do not achieve the recommended amount of physical activity due to a lack of motivation. The current research examined the validity and psychometric properties of the Be...

This study examines the predictive value of conflict and conflict-related variations in negative emotion dynamics, with respect to three cortisol indicators (cortisol awakening responses; overall cortisol output; diurnal cortisol slopes). A total of 166 workers provided momentary reports on conflict(s) with colleagues and negative emotions 10 times...

In the present ecological study, we analyzed the relations of a set of self-efficacy beliefs at work to parameters of diurnal cortisol variation. Specifically, using data collected during two consecutive working days from 166 workers, we tested a mediation model positing social and work-related self-efficacy beliefs as mediators of the relations be...

The role of different forms of self-esteem (i.e., global vs. domain-specific) at work and their longitudinal changes and associations have yet to be examined. Our aim is to analyze the pattern of longitudinal changes between global self-esteem (GSE) and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). We used three-wave longitudinal data (N = 1616) of newcom...

Objective This ecological study explored the association between regulatory emotional self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative emotions (RESE-NE) and heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of parasympathetic modulation of the heart that has been positively associated with a better ability to flexibly adjust to a changing environment and regulat...

The present study explored the association between perceived social support at work (from coworkers and supervisors), and heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of parasympathetic modulation of the heart which is considered an index of the ability to regulate emotional arousal in tune with environmental demands. To test these associations, we used...

The frequency with which Internalizing and Externalizing symptoms co-occur suggests that, behind both domains, there may be a common susceptibility represented by a general psychopathology factor. However, it’s still unclear whether this common susceptibility is affected by age-related variations. Internalizing (i.e., Fear and Distress) and Externa...

Introduction The Perception of Social Context refers to the perceptions that workers have of (1) the immediate supervisor, (2) the colleagues, and (3) top management of their organization. Objective The purpose of the present paper is to introduce the Perceptions of Social Context (PoSC) scale, an instrument for assessing workers’ perception of th...

This study explored the relationships between self-esteem level and self-esteem variability at work with parameters of diurnal cortisol rhythm, using intensive longitudinal data collected during two consecutive working days from N = 166 workers. Participants self-reported measures of sex, height, weight, self-esteem, neuroticism, and negative event...

Regulatory emotional self-efficacy beliefs (RESE) in managing negative emotions and in expressing positive emotions are believed to play an important role in different spheres of psychological functioning. However, the literature does not offer a quantitative synthesis of the degree of the relation between RESE and indices of (mal)adjustment. The p...

The present study aims to disentangle the state and trait components of prosocial goal realisation, defined as a set of personally meaningful prosocial actions undertaken in natural settings. Based on a diary study with seven daily measurements from 180 participants (a total of 1005 data points), we performed temporal variance decomposition using t...

Self-esteem represents one of the most important workers’ resources, and has been studied from two different perspectives conceiving self-esteem (1) as a global (i.e., global self-esteem, GSE), or (2) as a domain-specific construct (i.e., organization-based self-esteem, OBSE). To our knowledge, no study has addressed the dynamic relations between t...

Objective Effortful control (EC) has been conceptualized as a higher-order construct defined by a class of self-regulatory mechanisms. However, the developmental higher-order structure of EC has seldom been investigated with a thorough psychometric analysis. To begin to fill this gap in the literature, data were obtained from parents and teachers o...

Individuals are better at recognizing faces of their own age group (Own Age Bias) but it is unclear whether this bias occurs also for emotional faces and to what extent is affected by loneliness. Young individuals (N = 235) completed an age categorization task on faces of young and old individuals showing neutral, happy, and angry expressions. Afte...

Background The therapeutic alliance has been recognized as one of the most researched key elements of treatment across different therapeutic approaches and diagnostic domains. Despite its importance, our current understanding of its clinical relevance in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is still debated. This study aimed to examine...

Previous research shows an Own Age Bias in young adults, which has been attributed to the greater contact with, and/or to the greater salience of, others who belong to the same group. Importantly, there is some evidence that when emotional faces are used such effect is eliminated. Considering that the Own Age Bias relies both on social contacts and...

The Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale (CSWS) is a widely used personality self-report questionnaire developed for measuring the domains in which self-esteem is sustained by successes and achievements as well as threatened by obstacles and failures. Two studies (Nstudy1 = 453, Nstudy2 = 293) aimed to further refine our knowledge of its psychometric...

Using data from four different samples of full-time employees (Ntotal = 2,474), the present study was aimed to introduce and demonstrate the validity and reliability of the Organizational-Based General Self-esteem Scale (OB-GSE) a new six-item self-report scale to measure organizational-based self-esteem (OBSE) at work. Results provided evidence of...

Using data from four different samples of full-time employees (Ntotal = 2474), the present study was aimed to introduce and demonstrate the validity and reliability of the Organizational-Based General Self-esteem Scale (OB-GSE) a new six-item self-report scale to measure organizational-based self-esteem at work. Results provided evidence of (1) val...

Prosocial behavior is undertaken voluntarily to benefit others and includes a range of actions, such as helping, sharing, caring, and comforting. Our study concerned psychological mechanisms stimulating prosocial behavior explaining it from both the within-individual (daily fluctuations) and inter-individual (individual differences) perspectives. W...

Introduction: Previous studies examined the trajectory of self-esteem during critical developmental periods and over the life-span. However, little is known about how self-esteem changes during the school-to-work transition. Method: We examined the effect of beginning a job for the first time on self-esteem development, using data from 368 adole...

The sociometer theory of self-esteem (STS) argues that one’s self-esteem is affected by one’s perception of the quality of one’s relationships with significant others. Although the STS has been widely used in individual differences research there have been few investigations of its validity and value in organizational settings. Here we provide a sy...

No previous research explored the genetic and environmental structure of Big Five dimensions of personality and higher-order factors in a single twin study, except, in part, for just one study. We used the twin design to estimate the effects of genes and environment on both Five Factor model and related second- and third-order factors (i.e., Alpha...

Although personal resources support adjustment during hard times at work, social resources can have comparable influence in preventing the negative impact of adverse circumstances (Hobfoll 2001, 2002). This study investigates the contribution of both individual and group level positivity, a personal resource, in perceived intragroup conflict. Data...

The present two-wave study, conducted on 456 employees, investigates the mediating role of psychological capital (PsyCap) in the relationships between agentic capabilities (i.e., forethought, self-regulation, and self-reflection) and three outcomes, namely job performance, rated by supervisors, and two forms of social capital, namely vertical socia...

Inspired by the Conservation of Resource theory (Hobfoll, 1989), this study investigated the role of a broad set of personal vulnerabilities, social, and work-related stressors and resources as predictors of workers’ well-being during the COVID-19 outbreak. Participants were 594 workers in Italy. Results showed that personality predispostions, such...

Global self-esteem represents a protective personal resource lowering the risk of psychological distress. Research conducted in the work setting has confirmed the psychosocial benefits of high self-esteem. However, research linking self-esteem to neurobiological adaptability appears quite scarce. In this study, we propose a theoretical model in whi...

The main goal of the present study was to analyse the effects of regulatory modes (i.e., assessment and locomotion) on both positivity and job satisfaction. Furthermore, we explored the mediating role of positivity in the relationship between regulatory modes and job satisfaction. In order to test our hypotheses, we recruited employees (N = 563) fr...

The present study focused on the mediating role of positivity in the relationship between emotional stability, conscientiousness, with positive affect, negative affect, and anxiety, among priests and religious sisters during the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. We examined the role of positivity as a basic disposition predisposing individuals to a posit...

Emotional inertia refers to the extent to which emotional states are predictable over time and are resistant to change. High emotional inertia, characterized by emotional states that carry over from one moment to the next, has been linked with both psychological maladjustment and impaired emotion regulation abilities. However, little research has e...

Youth unemployment is a relevant issue among most European countries; therefore, it is important to understand its individual and situational determinants. This study aimed to investigate a conceptual model that explains the associations among positivity (POS), perceived support from employment agencies, perceived employability (PE), and employment...

Exhaustion refers to the feeling of ongoing loss of emotional, physical and cognitive resources. The present study draws on the Conservation of Resources Theory to examine the relationship between chronic exhaustion and negative emotional inertia among 206 employees (aged between 19 and 50 years; M = 21.03; SD = 2.98), in a naturalistic setting. To...

Background and Objectives Umbilical cord blood (UCB) donation is a behaviour promoted by many countries' health systems. However, UCB donation is not a widespread behaviour among expectant mothers, and little is known about the reasons that may lead to it. The aim of the present study was to analyse the contribution of Theory of Planned Behaviour (...

A large variety of positive outcomes including social adjustment, psychological well-being and health, have been recently closely associated with positivity (POS). On the assumption that differences in the POS degree might be associated with different individual neuroendocrine assets that enables people to cope effectively with stress, the present...

Emotional inertia is a central feature of emotion dynamics and it refers to the degree to which emotional states are self‐predictive and linger over time, describing their resistance to change. It is related to several indicators of maladjustment, yet there is limited research on its correlates in the workplace, where it may be particularly relevan...

Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) represent a specific class of prosocial behaviors observable in the organizational environment. This study examined the longitudinal relations among regulatory emotional, social and work self-efficacy beliefs, and their relations to Organizational Citizenship Behaviors directed at specific individuals (OC...

In this study we investigated whether regulatory emotional self-efficacy beliefs (RESE) indirectly predict turnover intentions (TI) through organizational socialization (OS) and organizational identification (OI). Three waves of data (1-year lag) were collected on a representative sample of 890 military newcomers belonging to two different cohorts....

Self-concept clarity reflects how confidently and clearly an individual defines the self-belief, and it is theorized to help individuals to be more resilient in the face of stressors. The present study aimed at investigating how self-concept clarity may be implicated in the stress process related to the COVID-19 outbreak, by examining its associati...

The present study was aimed at investigating the protective role of Global Self-Esteem (GSE) on the relationship between stressful life events and depression. A longitudinal research design, including two measurement occasions with a two-month interval was applied on a sample of 95 university students (80 females) with a mean age of 22.49 (SD = 6.7...

Lockdowns imposed by governments worldwide as a way to limit the spread of severe atypical respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2) have had heavy psychological and economic consequences. Arthritis patients are a vulnerable population at an increased risk of peritraumatic stress. This could be due to several reasons, including the fear of sho...

Past research on age-related differences in job performance have focused primarily between-person comparisons. In the present study, we examine within-individual changes in supervisor-rated job performance to examine the influence of age-related trends, cycles, and event-driven factors. Our analysis is based on an eight-wave dataset from a multiple...

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In this study, we addressed the relevance of the state-trait variance decomposition of global self-esteem (GSE) in organizational research. We used a longitudinal sample of 393 military cadets followed for 2 years (nT2 = 376) and adopted Latent Curve— Latent State-Trait models for separating stable and transient factors in GSE and in three work-rel...

Agentic capabilities refer to the basic capabilities of mind that, according to social cognitive theory, allow people to proactively influence their functioning and external context. This study presents a new scale, namely the Work Agentic Capabilities (WAC) questionnaire, that consists of 28 items and measures forethought capability, self-regulati...

Adolescence is a period of many changes; adolescent is called to form a stable identity, to achieve emotional autonomy from parents and intimate relationships with peers. The development of secure attachment to parents, good level of Self differentiation are linked to wellbeing.

Over the last thirty years, the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (Kenny, 1996) became an important methodology to address interpersonal perceptions in dyads. In this contribution, we present each practical step to conduct an extended version of it, the Actor-Partner Interdependence Mediation Model (Ledermann, Macho, & Kenny, 2011) using multilev...

In this study, we tested a theoretical model with moral disengagement, a mediator, and generalized social trust (GST), a mediator and a moderator of the relationship between personality traits and rule-respecting behaviors (i.e., social distancing and stay-at-home), during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Italy. The data were col...

Emotion dynamics, how people’s emotions fluctuate across time, represent a key source of information about people’s psychological functioning and well-being. Investigating emotion dynamics in the workplace is particularly relevant, as affective experiences are intimately connected to organizational behavior and effectiveness. In this study, we exam...

Despite the clear theoretical link between promotions and job performance, the few studies that have tested this relationship have instead found that the role of job performance level in determining promotions is much less than might be expected. In 4 studies, we propose and test a different way of thinking about the performance-promotion relations...

The purpose of the present paper is to introduce the Military Academic Motivation Scale (MAMS), a short and reliable instrument for assessing the different types of motivation among military cadets. Three representative samples of military cadets completed the MAMS. In Study 1 ( N = 452), the hypothesized five-factor structure of the MAMS was empir...

Objective This study investigates associations between Big Five personality trait change, organizational socialization, and organizational identification during a three‐year police officer training program (N = 416 police officer cadets). Method Participants completed a questionnaire measuring the Big Five personality traits when they entered the...

Emotional inertia is a key feature of emotional dynamics and it refers to the degree to which a current emotional state can be predicted by a previous emotional state. In this study, using the experience sampling method, we examined the relationship between inertia of negative emotions at work and parasympathetic activity, measured by vagally-media...

Background The mechanism underlying the association between personality profile and subclinical atherosclerosis is poorly understood. This study explores the association between personality, carotid atherosclerosis and arterial stiffness, and the contribution of genes and environment to this association. Methods Early atherosclerotic traits, inclu...

We examine the structural overlap of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioral Approach System (BAS) with Stability and Plasticity, the two higher-order factors encompassing the Big Five. Carver and White’s BIS/BAS and the Big Five Inventory were administered to a sample of 330 adults, serving both as targets and informants. Self- a...

Negative emotional inertia refers to the degree of which a current emotional state can be predicted by a previous emotional state and it represents a relevant marker of psychological maladjustment. The current study tested a theoretical model in which the dynamic impact of daily hassles on negative emotional inertia is mediated by exhaustion, and m...

By drawing on effort-recovery theory, we conducted two studies to explore the short-term process through which workaholism may affect health and to assess the implications of such a process for job performance. In Study 1 we hypothesised that workaholic tendencies would affect daily workload and that daily workload would mediate the relationship be...

This entry is focused on the definition of the construct of self‐esteem. Alternative operational definitions of the construct are reviewed. Along with a general presentation of the construct of self‐esteem, relationships with related individual difference variables are discussed. Emphasis is placed upon the importance of self‐esteem as a predictor...