Luca Mallia

• Professor
• Professor (Associate) at Foro Italico University of Rome

The Profile of Mood States (POMS) is one of the most widely applied scales for measuring mood. Considering the advantages of short scales and increased international research, the aim of the present study was to evaluate cross-culturally the psychometric properties of a short 16-item version of the POMS. Data were collected from 15,693 participants...

Music psychology has concentrated on how music listening is exploited for mood regulation. The Music in Mood Regulation Brief scale (B-MMR; Saarikallio, 2008) is a well-established measure to assess the types of strategies individuals adopt to regulate mood through music. The current study seeks to verify the psychometric dimensionality and reliabi...

Introduction Total and sub-total lesions of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) are one of the most frequent and performance-limiting injuries to the knee joint within the active population. Early surgical management, often regarded as the primary management strategy, has recently been shown to have similar outcomes when compared with an initial r...

Using a cross-national approach, we focused on sport perfectionism among university athletes from two Western countries (i.e., Italy and Spain). We examined a guiding theoretical model in which sport perfectionism influenced athletes’ experience of their own performance through the intervening effects of their basic psychological needs’ satisfactio...

Values-based education seeks to cultivate personal responsibility, empathy, and integrity to encourage critical reflection on the (anticipated or actual) consequences of one’s choices and behaviours. To comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency’s International Standard for Education, anti-doping education programmes must incorporate values-based com...

Aggressiveness and unethical behaviors are an important problem in sports today. Understanding how to properly measure and manage an athlete's aggressive tendency is a crucial lesson to be learned within the rulesets of a sporting environment. This study aims at validating the Italian version of the Competitive Aggressiveness and Anger Scale (CAAS)...

The use of substances to improve sports performance is a widespread phenomenon among adolescents. Several anti-doping programs have been developed, mainly based on knowledge-based evidence. The main aim of the present study was to implement an anti-doping intervention in sports high school students, based on a psychological framework, such as Socio...

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED IN MUSIC PERCEPTION: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2025.2326557. Over the last fifteen years, music psychology has concentrated on how music listening is exploited for mood regulation. The Music in Mood Regulation scale (MMR: Saarikallio, 2008) was conceived as a psychometric tool to assess the extent to which individua...

These are the items of the Brief Music in Mood Regulation scale (B-MMR; Saarikallio, 2012) translated into Italian in this paper: Ansani, A., Mallia, L., & Saarikallio, S. (in press). Music in Mood Regulation Brief scale (B-MMR): Italian validation and insights on musical preferences, expertise, and reward experiences. The translations were done b...

The page for this paper was mistakenly created by ResearchGate and cannot be removed. We apologise for this inconvenience. To access the published version of this article on Music Perception, please use the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2025.2326557. Music psychology has concentrated on how music listening is exploited for mood regulat...

The use of substances to improve sports performance is a widespread phenomenon among adolescents. Several anti-doping programs have been developed, mainly based on knowledge-based evidence. The main aim of the present study was to implement an anti-doping intervention in sports high school students, based on psychological framework, such as Socio-C...

In a meta-analysis of research on measures of the habit construct, we aimed to estimate the size and variability of habit–behavior and intention–behavior relations, and habit as a mediator of past–future behavior relations. Furthermore, we investigated the theory-consistent moderators of these relations including opportunity for habit formation and...

Several studies have employed music to affect various tasks through mood induction procedures. In this perspective, music's emotional content coherently affects the listeners' mood, which, in turn, affects performance. On the contrary, in film music cognition, schema theory suggests that music adds semantic information that interacts with the viewe...

The expression of original and functional motor actions (e.g. motor creativity) has been associated to various self-concept constructs such as self-efficacy (Richard et al., 2018). The aim of the present study was to investigate how motor creativity and self-efficacy could change according to gymnastics practice years. Thirty-five young gymnasts (N...

Despite numerous health benefits associated with sports participation, sport injury is a common by-product widely accepted by athletes. Given the multifactorial nature of injury, its definition and classification vary among studies and disciplines in the sport injury psychology. This variability renders any comparison of findings and conclusions ac...

Background: This study aimed to investigate differences in adolescents' social relationships with classmates of diverse gender, socioeconomic status, immigrant background, and academic achievement. Methods: A population of 10th-grade students (N = 406,783; males = 50.3%; Mage = 15.57 years, SDage = 0.75) completed the Classmates Social Isolation...

Background: Use of Neuro-Enhancement Substances (NES) such as prescription drugs, illicit drugs, or alcohol to improve cognition, prosocial behavior, and performance is increasing among students. Aims: The study applied a multi-theory, integrated theoretical model to identify motivational and social cognition determinants of NES use among students....

Objectives Anti-doping policies represent a group of regulations and procedures that are applied by anti-doping organizations in order to safeguard sports against doping. Evidence implies that, for anti-doping policies to be effective, they need to be endorsed by athletes. Still, there is scarce evidence on the process through which athletes decide...

Research on attention in sport using eye-tracking methodology has highlighted that the highest levels of expertise and performance are characterized by a specific gaze behavior consisting of a perception–action variable named quiet eye. The present study aimed to understand the role of quiet eye during the three-point shot, especially in game condi...

Background: Motivation to engage in physical activity plays a central role in ensuring the health of the population. The present study investigated the psychometric properties and validity in Italy of the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire (BREQ-3), a widely used instrument for assessing individuals' motivation to exercise based on se...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated governmental restrictions suddenly changed everyday life and potentially affected exercise behavior. The aim of this study was to explore whether individuals changed their preference for certain types of physical exercise during the pandemic and to identify risk factors for inactivity. An international onlin...

One of the most tangible effects of music is its ability to alter our perception of time. Research on waiting times and time estimation of musical excerpts has attested its veritable effects. Nevertheless, there exist contrasting results regarding several musical features’ influence on time perception. When considering emotional valence and arousal...

In aiming sport contexts, the quiet eye (QE) - the final ocular fixation before movement initiation - is a crucial perceptual-cognitive skill. Indeed, an extended QE permits athletes to achieve high performances, aiding optimal attentional control, particularly in situations in which athletes are "under pressure." Such situations are common in spor...

An online survey (N = 210) is presented on how the perceived utility of correct and exaggerated countermeasures against Covid-19 is affected by different pronominalization strategies (impersonal form, you, we). In evaluating the pronominalization effect, we have statistically controlled for the roles of several personal characteristics: Moral Disen...

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) represents a massive global health crisis leading to different reactions in people. Those reactions may be adaptive or not depending on situational or psychological processes. Disordered eating attitudes and behaviors are likely to be exacerbated by the pandemic through multiple pathways as suggested by...

The outbreak of coronavirus required adjustment regarding the delivery of interventions. Media literacy interventions are necessary to help people acquire relevant skills to navigate the complexities of media communications, and to encourage health-promoting behaviors. The present study aimed to promote a media literacy intervention regarding perfo...

Obiettivi: All’interno del quadro teorico della teoria dei bisogni psicologici di base (Ryan & Deci, 2000), il presente studio ha testato a) un modello strutturale di relazioni in cui le aspirazioni perfezionistiche e le preoccupazioni perfezionistiche sono state complessivamente associate alle valutazioni soggettive del successo percepito dagli...

Doping use is considered as a deviant behavior in sport contexts, and it is necessary to recognize preventive factors to shut down the negative consequences. We proposed that athletes experiencing loss of personal significance would be more prone to doping use intentions. This pathway should occur through the effect of the enhanced predominance of...

Doping violates the Spirit of Sport and is thought to contradict the values which underpin this spirit. Values-based education (VBE) has been cited as a key element for creating a clean sport culture across age groups. Culturally relevant VBE requires understanding of the values that motivate athletes from different countries to practice their spor...

One of the most used instruments to assess perfectionism is Hewitt and Flett's Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (HFMPS). This article reports result of two studies aimed at evaluating and comparing two short HFMPS versions provided by literature in Italian samples. In Study 1, two previously proposed short forms–Cox and colleagues' and Hewitt a...

The present research focused on the general theme of perfectionism in the sport domain, and it provided the first empirical validation of the original 72-item “Multidimensional Inventory of Perfectionism in Sport” (MIPS) among Italian athletes. The study, specifically, also focused on the relations linking personal and interpersonal components of p...

Background: Volleyball officials require a combination of qualities, e.g., confidence, decisiveness, courage and mental toughness as very important attributes for their performance. Measurement of the self-efficacy of volleyball referees has not been studied with large samples; therefore, the aim of this study was to fill this gap in the research....

PurposeThe physical self-concept (PSC) refers to the knowledge, feelings, memories, and experiences a person refers to his/her body and it is one of the crucial constructs aimed at describing a person’s subjective perception of his/her own fitness, health, appearance, and physical activity (PA). This study had a threefold purpose: (1) to assess the...

With respect to both competitive and amateur/fitness sports, media may strongly influence young people’s opinions and behaviors concerning the use of PAES (Performance and Appearance Enhancing Substances). The present investigation addressed this topic by focusing on sport sciences students’ beliefs concerning the possible role of media related to...

Human factors play a fundamental role in driving performance and in the errors and violations that can be committed behind the wheel. While new technologies will soon allow “automatic” driving, it continues to be crucial to analyse and understand the factors determining human error during driving. Errors, carelessness, and driving violations can be...

Objective: To assess the features of sleep in preschoolers with ADHD by means of questionnaire and actigraphy. Method: Twenty-five ADHD and 21 age-matched typically developing (TD) preschool children underwent the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for ages 1½ to 5 and Pre-School-Age Psychiatric Assessment interview. Sleep was assessed by means of a m...

Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the links between temperament and sleep in a group of preschoolers with ADHD. Method: Twenty-five ADHD (M = 5.37 years, SD = 1.09) and 22 typically developing (TD; M = 5.10, SD = 1.18) preschoolers participated in the study. Sleep was assessed with the Sleep Disturbance Scale and wrist actigraphy...

Background: Reliable Fertility-specific QoL measures can be obtained through the FertiQoL, a questionnaire with six-subscales that consider different core aspects of the person’s wellbeing and way of behaving during treatment. Objective: Examine the psychometric properties of all six-subscales of the Italian FertiQoL in a sample of infertile women...

INTRODUCTION. Perfectionism is defined as a multidimensional domain-specific personality trait that has shown different relations with psychological processes and outcomes (Stoeber, 2017). Although there are several sport-specific instruments to measure perfectionism in the scientific literature, none of these has ever been used in the Italian cont...

The aim of the study was to assess the relationships among athletes’ doping-related media literacy, such as their awareness of media influence and media realism, their perceived capacity to use media correctly and/or to resist to media pressure, and their beliefs (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms) and social-cognitive mechanisms (i.e., self-regula...

A field study conducted with professional athletes (N = 420, 72.2% men, Mage = 25.14) examined the antecedents of stress linked to career termination. We hypothesized that stress linked to career termination may be affected by the type of passion (harmonious and obsessive) athletes develop for their sport activity, and that this passion may be affe...

In the last few decades, several studies have investigated the role of personality traits and attitudes toward traffic safety in predicting driving behaviors in diverse types of drivers across several countries. However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies so far have investigated the possible moderating role played by age in relation to predi...

The present study aimed to: (a) validate the factor structures of three scales assessing driving behavior, attitudes toward traffic safety (ATTS) and self-regulation in driving, in a sample of Italian older adults, through confirmatory factor analyses and (b) to determine the effectiveness of these measures in predicting the likelihood and the freq...

The aim of the present study was to identify sub-types of moped riders based on a cluster analysis of specific personality characteristics (i.e., driving anger, anxiety, angry hostility, excitement-seeking, altruism, normlessness, and driving locus of control) within a large sample of Italian adolescents. The study had also the aim to compare the e...

Dendrogram of the hierarchical cluster analysis.

Centers for the three clusters and distances between the final cluster centers.

The present study examined the interplay between self-determined motivation and the use of cognitive strategies in predicting university students’ academic performance while taking into account the effect of prior achievement. A theory based model was tested using structural equation modeling on a sample of 764 Italian university students. Results...

Identifying the factors associated with prosocial and antisocial behaviors in youth sport may provide evidence to inform interventions aimed at promoting prosocial behaviors and minimizing rule transgressions in young athletes. We investigated relations among social‐contextual factors (e.g., social support), personal motivational factors (e.g., psy...

The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of the Quiet eye (QE) phenomenon on performances during the shooting section of “Laser Run” of Modern Pentathlon, in two samples of athletes (novices and experts). The “Laser Run” consists of running and shooting activities. The study involved 18 experienced athletes of the Italian National Team of M...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00717.].

Purpose: Several cognitive mechanisms have been hypothesized to be involved in insomnia disorder. Insomnia catastrophising thinking consists of overestimating the sleep disturbance and the related daytime impairment. The present study aimed to develop and assess the psychometric properties of the Italian adaptation of the Insomnia Catastrophising S...

Driving is important at all ages to achieve and maintain autonomy and independence. It is also a complex task that draws on a variety of cognitive and decisional processes. These processes can change across the life course, and how these processes change can influence driving behaviour and safety on the road. Reason et al.’s (1990) taxonomy provide...

Physical activity and exercise have been identified as behaviors to preserve physical and mental health in older adults. The aim of the present study was to test the Integrated Behavior Change model in exercise and physical activity behaviors. The study evaluated two different samples of older adults: the first engaged in exercise class, the second...

The literature shows that homesickness can have a negative impact on different areas of psychological functioning such as cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physical and social ones. The study, conducted on a sample of first-year university students, aimed to test a model hypothesizing that two distinct dimensions of homesickness, attachment to home...

The study confirmed past evidences (e.g. Gonçalves et al., 2010; Lee et al., 2008; Lucidi et al., 2017), attesting the role of task and ego orientation in predicting moral attitudes in sport context. More specifically, the results confirmed the role of task and ego orientation in fostering both prosocial and antisocial attitudes. The study, further...

Background/aim: Self-efficacy for coping with cancer plays a critical role in influencing psychological cancer-related outcomes, some studies suggested its role in enhancing or reducing the effects of psychological interventions in cancer patients. Reiki has recently been included among the efficacious complementary therapeutic intervention for ca...

Background Fatigue and sleep disturbances are prominent symptoms in Fibromyalgia (FM) and significantly affect the level of the patients' impairment. Some studies reported a synergic interaction of depression and poor sleep quality associated with fatigue (e.g. [1]); while Marques et al. [2] showed a significant association of the fatigue severity...

Doping use in recreational sports is an emerging issue that has received limited attention so far in the psychological literature. The present study assessed the lifetime prevalence of controlled performance and appearance enhancing substances (PAES), and used behavioral reasoning theory to identify the reasons for using and for avoiding using cont...

The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a media literacy intervention targeting, for the first time, the specific topic of Performance and Appearance Enhancing Substances (PAESs) use in high-school students. Overall, 389 students (52% male) aged between 13 and 19 years (mean = 16.56 year; SD = 1.26) participated to a media literac...

Old age is associated with increased risk of several debilitating diseases. Physical activity and exercise have been identified as behaviours to preserve physical and mental health in older adults. The aim of the study was to test the Integrated Behavioral Change model in exercise and physical activity behaviors on two samples of older adults. A fi...

Introduction: Several instruments have been developed and validated to investigate insomnia-specific cognitions. The Insomnia Catastrophizing Scale (ICS) is a self-report questionnaire evaluating catastrophizing thoughts related to nighttime symptoms (ICS-N) and daytime impairment (ICS-D) of insomnia. The aim of the present study was to assess the...

Background: The present study tested Lee et al.’s (2008) model of moral attitudes and cheating behavior in sports in an Italian sample of young tennis players and extended it to predict behavior in actual match play. In the first phase of the study we proposed that moral, competence and status values would predict prosocial and antisocial moral att...

Recent aggressive chemotherapeutic and combined treatments have resulted in increased survivorship for advanced stage breast cancer. In some patients, treatment produces an actual abatement of their cancer, while in others treatment mitigates the progression of cancer bringing those patients into palliative care where their chronic disease requires...

Background: University students confront psychological difficulties that can negatively influence their academic performance. The present study aimed to assess several areas of adaptive and maladaptive psychological functioning among university students who request counseling services. Method: One hundred eighty-four young female students seeking p...

Objectives Anticipated affective responses influence decision-making processes in profound ways. The present study emphasized the role of anticipated regret and assessed the additive and interactive effects of anticipated regret in predicting doping intentions among adolescent athletes. Design Survey-based, correlational. Method Two hundred and six...

Negli ultimi anni ricerche sociologiche, mediche, psicologiche e pedagogiche hanno mostrato un forte interesse, in particolare negli adolescenti, per le pratiche intenzionali di potenziamento (“enhancement”) del corpo e della mente rispetto al “normale” funzionamento fisico-psichico, attraverso l’uso di sostanze chimiche o di pratiche strumentali....

Objective: This study aimed to cast light on the relationships between sleep habits, perceived sleep problems and school performance in Evening-type (E-type) compared with Morning-type (M-type) early adolescents. Methods: Comparison of questionnaire data of E-type and M-type adolescents random-selected from a large sample of eight-grade adolesce...

The Quiet Eye (QE) consists in the final visual fixation before the initiation of a critical phase of the movement, and functionally represent the time needed for the precise control of movements. The aims of the manuscript is provide a mini-review of the studies analyzing through Eye Tracking (ET) the Quiet Eye phenomena in ecological sport settin...

Background Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic widespread pain syndrome associated with symptoms such as sleep disorders, fatigue, depression, anxiety and cognitive alterations with a severe impairment of the life quality. Objectives The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between subjective and objective assessment of sleep quality and to...

Objectives: The main goal of this research focused on the development and validation of three instruments designed to assess athletes' self-regulatory efficacy in team contexts, team collective efficacy and team moral disengagement with relevance for doping use across three European countries. Design: The research relied on three distinct studies....

Background/aim: Breast cancer is associated with appearance concerns and issues of appearance identity, that require an appropriate and independent assessment. The Derriford Appearance Scale (DAS) has been widely used to this end, as has been shown in UK and other international samples. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which an...

Introducing a dual-process approach, this study extends research on the psychology of doping by considering discrepancies between athletes’ explicit and implicit evaluations of doping and the way they are cognitively resolved. Framing our hypotheses in terms of the associative-propositional evaluation model, we tested the mediating role of an exemp...

Cognitive self-regulation refers to the mental processes that students adopt with the aim of adapting and changing their processes of cognition and that can lead to positive results in terms of learning. The purpose of the present study was to develop a short scale with sound psychometric properties in order to measure self-regulated knowledge in u...

This contribution attempts to provide a broad perspective to the psychological study of neuroenhancement (NE). It departs from the assumption that, as the use of performance enhancing substances in sport, the use of substances with the aim of improving one’s cognitive, motivational and affective functioning in academic domains is a goal-directed be...

A motivational model integrating self-determination theory, the theory of planned behaviour, and the health action process approach was tested in three samples in three behavioural contexts: fruit and vegetable, breakfast, and snack consumption. Perceived support for autonomous (self-determined) forms of motivation from parents and autonomous motiv...

The study aimed to assess the adaptive and maladaptive functioning of 250 young university female students in order to identify their main psychological problematic areas. Results showed that students who had asked for psychological help reported higher scores in several problematic areas than those who had never asked for psychological help. The r...

Background. The diagnosis, treatment, and long-term management of cancer can present individuals with a multitude of stressors at various points in that trajectory. Psychosocial distress may appear early in the diagnostic process and have negative effects on compliance with treatment and subsequent quality of life. Purpose. The aim of the study was...

The theoretical and research considerations presented in this chapter overall are guided by the assumption that doping behavior partly depends on the dynamic interplay between an individual’s beliefs and the appraisals he or she makes in evaluating self-relevant interpersonal experiences. The chapter focuses on a particular form of interpersonal ap...

In recent years, the study of the socio-cognitive determinants and correlates of doping use has been the focus of much psychological and psychosocial inquiry. Much of this scientific focus has departed from the general consensus that doping use is an illicit behavior which is unhealthy and intentionally adopted to achieve a specific objective or go...

Several studies have shown that personality traits and attitudes toward traffic safety predict aberrant driving behaviors and crash involvement. However, this process has not been adequately investigated in professional drivers, such as bus drivers. The present study used a personality-attitudes model to assess whether personality traits predicted...

A prospective field study conducted with runners training for an upcoming marathon (Marathon of Rome 2013) examined the relation between regulatory modes, locomotion and assessment, and stress. Integrating regulatory mode theory and the dualistic model of passion, we hypothesized that the relation between regulatory modes (evaluated 3 months before...

Although there are several studies on the effects of personality and attitudes on risky driving among young drivers, related research in older drivers is scarce. The present study assessed a model of personality-attitudes-risky driving in a large sample of active older drivers. A cross-sectional design was used, and structured and anonymous questio...

The present research focused on the general hypothesis that moral disengagement, which involves individuals' spedfic means to deactivate moral censures, may partly account for adolescents' propensity to use doping substances. It also summarised novel analyses from a comprehensive dataset involving 1,975 Italian highschool students, which firstly sh...