Augusto Palmonari’s research while affiliated with University of Bologna and other places

Identity styles (Berzonsky, 1989) represent social-cognitive strategies that adolescents can use to evaluate identity-relevant information in order to find their own set of values, attitudes and committments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between perception of social support from significant others (i.e., father, mother, brother/sister, best friend, teacher), identity styles (i.e., informational, normative, diffuse/avoidant), and commitment in adolescence. Participants were 726 high school students (46% males), aged between 13 and 20 years. The results showed that the support received from the brother/sister, the best friend and the teacher is positively associated with the informational style; the support received from the father, the mother and the teacher is positively related to the normative style; and the support received from the mother is negatively linked to the diffuse/avoidant style. Furthermore, the informational and normative styles are positively associated with commitment, whereas the diffuse/avoidant style is negatively linked to it.

In Italy, almost all adolescents join one or more peer-groups fairly regularly and are aware of the existence of different types of peer-groups. This chapter reports on several studies on adolescents and the importance of their peer-groups. It reviews investigations of social psychological aspects of adolescents and their peer-groups and, more specifically, of ecological aspects of peer-groups, dynamics of social categorization, and the effects of the relationship between the individual and the group on self-description and the perception of others. As far as social categorization processes are concerned, support was found, in part, for Turner's (1981) self-categorization theory, and in part, for Deschamp's (1982) co-variation thesis. This article was written while the third author was on leave in Bologna, Italy, invited by the University of Bologna as Professore a Contratto.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relation between attachment and identity in adolescence and emerging adulthood. The participants filled out measures of attachment to parents and peers and identity development in relational and educational domains. By means of cluster analysis, participants have been classified into four clusters: individuals strongly attached to both parents and peers; individuals weakly attached to both parents and peers; individuals with high attachment to parents and low to peers; individuals with low attachment to parents and high to peers. In adolescence, gender differences in the distribution of participants among the four clusters were found. Associations between attachment clusters and identity was strong and differentiate in adolescents and emerging adults. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

A growing body of evidence reveals that adolescents and emerging adults strongly attached to parents and peers report high psychological well-being. Less investigated is the association between the quality of attachment and the perception of social well-being, that is the evaluation made by individuals of the quality of their life and their function in the society. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to investigate if high parental attachment promotes social well-being by means of the mediation of peers attachment and to examine if these relationships are moderated by gender and age. The participants were 346 individuals (51% males): 186 adolescents and 160 university students . The hypothesized model was tested through structural equation modelling. Findings indicated a very good fit of the model. The multi-group comparison revealed significant differences between boys and girls. In males a good parental attachment promotes social well-being through the mediation of peer attachment. Whereas, in females parental attachment influences social well-being both directly and indirectly, by means of peer attachment. Furthermore, as individuals grew older the influence of the peer attachment on social well-being increased. © 2018 Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione. All rights reserved.

This experiment (N = 239) investigated the effects of group power and legitimacy of power differentials on intergroup discrimination, measured through negative outcome allocations and linguistic abstraction. Furthermore, it examined the mechanisms through which group power affects discrimination by testing the mediating role of perceived interdependence and social identification. Three power conditions were created by modifying the standard minimal group paradigm: equal, high and low power conditions. Power was directly proportional (legitimate conditions) or inversely proportional (illegitimate conditions) to group members' performance in a problem-solving task. Results showed that intergroup discrimination in the high and low power conditions was higher than in the equal power condition on both the allocation and the linguistic measures. Legitimacy moderated the effect of group power on negative outcome allocations, while it had a main effect on the linguistic abstraction. In addition, perceived interdependence turned out to be the main mediator of the effect of power on negative outcome allocations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Previous research has shown the strength of the linguistic intergroup bias across different intergroup settings. However, there is no evidence of linguistic discrimination within minimal groups. This experiment aimed to shed light on the phenomenon of linguistic intergroup discrimination in a minimal group setting, and to investigate the impact of group entitativity on this bias. Four group entitativity conditions were created by altering the mere categorization condition toward less entitativity and toward more entitativity. Participants were asked to describe the choice allegedly made by another participant in allocating resources to ingroup and outgroup members. Results showed an overall linguistic bias, whereby ingroup behaviors were described more positively and abstractly than outgroup behaviors. Increasing group entitativity resulted in increasingly biased outgroup descriptions, which in the most entitative condition revealed a predominant use of negative abstract terms.

No previous work in the field of group-related attitudes and emotions has investigated the possible affective consequences of ingroup ambivalence—that is, the consequences of having attitudes towards an ingroup that are simultaneously both positive and negative. The current study was designed to explore this issue. Ambivalent attitudes have been argued to be more psychologically salient to the individual than univalent ones. A linear increase in participants' experienced affect was therefore predicted as a function of their ambivalence toward the ingroup. However, consistent with the predictions of social identity theory, previous findings have shown that higher ingroup identifiers are more likely to be involved with the ingroup than lower identifiers. Accordingly, we predicted and found effects of ingroup ambivalence on affect for high but not low ingroup identifiers. Combining the findings of two distinct literatures, the initial evidence provided by this study exploratively traces the sources of the affective processes that are set in motion by the evaluation of one's own group in an intergroup context. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study analysis the relationship between perceptions of the justice of teacher' behaviour and (a) the legitimation of school authority and (b) the legitimation of institutional authorities outside school. 448 adolescent students participated in the study. In a questionnaire participants were asked about (a) perceptions of the justice of teachers' behaviour: (b) evaluation of the school experience; and (c) evaluation of institutional authorities. Results show that the evaluation of the justice of teacher behaviour, in particular relational and procedural justice, have an impact on the legitimation of the authority of teachers and on the evaluation of institutional authorities outside school. Results also show that the legitimacy granted to teachers is a mediator variable between perceptions of justice in school and evaluation of authorities outside school. These results are discussed in the context of the studies on the relationship between school experience and adolescents' attitudes towards authorities, and in the framework of the "Relational Model of Authority" and of the "Group Value Model".