Elena Trifiletti

The Mediating Role of Psychophysic Strain in the Relationship Between Workaholism, Job Performance, and Sickness Absence: A Longitudinal Study

Objective: To test a theoretical model in which workaholism predicts both directly and indirectly, via psychophysic strain, job performance and sickness absences. Methods: A multimethod study was performed examining a sample of 322 workers in a private company. The study was articulated into two phases, over a time period of 15 months. Workaholism was assessed using a self-report measure (time 1). Psychophysic strain was measured by the occupational physician, performance by the supervisor, and data on sickness absences were collected from the companys database (time 2). Results: Results highlighted a positive relationship between workaholism and psychophysic strain. Psychophysic strain was negatively associated with job performance and positively associated with sickness absences. In addition, workaholism predicted sickness absences. Conclusion: Workaholism negatively affects the health of workers. This is associated with lower working performance and greater sickness absences.

Evaluating the effects of a message on attitude and intention to eat raw meat: Salmonellosis prevention.

Salmonellosis is one of the most common foodborne human diseases. The risk of infection can be reduced by communication campaigns. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the efficacy of a food safety message that underlines that eating well-cooked meat is an effective strategy for preventing salmonellosis. The target audience was young adults (university students). They were presented with one of two messages, a prevention message or a control message. The prevention message proved to be very effective. First, it changed the attitude toward raw or rare meat, which after having read the prevention message was evaluated less positively and more negatively. Second, intentions to eat raw or rare meat were weaker in those who read the prevention message compared with those who read the control message. Third, after the message, participants in the experimental condition, but not in the control condition, associated the self-image more with well-done meat than with raw or rare meat.

Nurses’ Comfort with Touch and Workplace Well-Being

Touch is an essential part of caregiving and has been proved to be useful to reduce pain. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to nurses’ perceptions of touch. The aim of this article was to examine the relationship between nurses’ feelings of comfort with touch and their well-being at work. A sample of 241 nurses attending a pain management training course completed a questionnaire, including the following measures: Comfort with Touch (CT) scale (task-oriented contact, touch promoting physical comfort, touch providing emotional containment), Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI; emotional exhaustion, cynicism), and Job Satisfaction. Results of structural equation models showed that touch providing emotional containment was the main predictor of emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion, in turn, was positively related to cynicism and negatively related to job satisfaction. In addition, the direct path from touch providing emotional containment to cynicism was significant. Practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Development and Initial Validation of the Nurses' Comfort With Touch Scale.

Background and Purpose: The extent to which nurses feel comfortable about the use of touch may affect the frequency and quality of nursing touch-based interventions. No valid instrument exists to assess nurses’ feelings of comfort with touch. In this study, the nurses’ scale was developed and preliminary validated. Methods: Items were generated through semistructured interviews. After testing the content validity with a team of experts, the psychometric properties were tested with a sample of 451 nurses. Results: Explorative factor analysis yielded a five-factor solution, which was supported by confirmatory factor analysis. Examination of concurrent validity revealed that comfort with touch was correlated with positive affective states and emotional self-efficacy. Conclusion: Future directions and implications for nursing research, education, and practice are discussed.

Burnout Disrupts Anxiety Buffer Functioning Among Nurses: A Three-Way Interaction Model

Over the last 40 years, job burnout has attracted a great deal of attention among researchers and practitioners and, after decades of research and interventions, it is still regarded as an important issue. With the aim of extending the Anxiety Buffer Disruption Theory (ABDT), in this paper we argue that high levels of burnout may disrupt the anxiety buffer functioning that protects people from death concerns. ABDT was developed from Terror Management Theory (TMT). According to TMT, reminders of one’s mortality are an essential part of humans’ daily experience and have the potential to awake paralyzing fear and anxiety. In order to cope with death concerns, people typically activate an anxiety-buffering system centered on their cultural worldview and self-esteem. Recent ABDT research shows that individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder are unable to activate such anxiety buffering defenses. In line with these results, we hypothesized that the burnout syndrome may have similar effects, and that individuals with higher levels of burnout will be less likely to activate an anxiety buffering response when their mortality is made salient. Participants were 418 nurses, who completed a questionnaire including: a mortality salience (MS) manipulation, a delay manipulation, and measures of burnout, work-related self-efficacy, and representation of oneself as a valuable caregiver. Nurses are daily exposed both to the risk of burnout and to mortality reminders, and thus constituted an ideal population for this study. In line with an anxiety buffer disruption hypothesis, we found a significant three-way interaction between burnout, MS and delay. Participants with lower levels of burnout reported higher levels of self-efficacy and a more positive representation as caregivers in the MS condition compared to the control condition, when there was a delay between MS manipulation and the assessment of the dependent measures. The difference was non-significant for participants with higher levels of burnout. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

Out-group threats and distress as antecedents of common in-group identity among majority and minority group members in the aftermath of a natural disaster.

The aim of the present study was to examine the role of out-group threats in fostering one-group perceptions directly and indirectly via post-traumatic stress symptoms in the aftermath of a natural disaster. We also tested whether these relationships differ depending on the ethnic group of belonging (majority vs. minority). Participants were 589 Italians and 122 immigrants from a region strongly affected by the earthquakes that struck Northern Italy in 2012. Results revealed that among Italians threat stemming from negative out-group behaviour was associated positively with post-traumatic stress symptoms and negatively with perceptions of being a common group with immigrant survivors. Among immigrants, threat posed by the out-group for economic resources was positively associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms and, indirectly, with higher one-group perceptions.

Variables of Individual Difference and the Experience of Touch in Nursing

We aim to investigate nurses’ feelings of comfort or discomfort with three different types of touch: task-oriented contact, touch promoting physical comfort, and touch providing emotional containment. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of 198 nurses. We present results of multiple regression analysis identifying some antecedents of nurses’ feelings of comfort with touch, namely, attachment style, worry, gender, and length of service. Worry is negatively associated with task-oriented contact and touch promoting physical comfort. Attachment security and length of service are associated with comfort with touch aimed at emotional containment; female nurses feel more comfortable than male nurses in performing this type of touch. Practical implications of findings are discussed in relation to the promotion of focused training courses for practitioners who are willing to improve the quality of care services.

Machocracy: Dehumanization and objectification of women

Are we all human beings? In this article, we report evidence that individuals tend to deny humanity to other groups, a phenomenon called dehumanization. Infrahumanization theory states that individuals deny uniquely human attributes to other groups: the outgroup is perceived as less human than the ingroup. However, humanity may be denied in at least two ways: groups may be equated to animals or, alternatively, to machines. Female objectification is a special form of dehumanization: women are considered only for instrumental use. Objectification theory states that women are objectified when they are perceived as objects for personal use. Mass-media contribute to depict an objectified version of women, in that media represent a distorted, excessively thin, image of the female body. Exposure to the media leads women to compare their bodies with the thin ideal and to experience dissatisfaction and low self-esteem. Media are invited to present average-size models of women hence proposing a more realistic representation of the female body and preventing women’s body dissatisfaction and eating disorders.

Implicit and explicit images of the United States among left-wing and right-wing Italians

Research findings on Image Theory show that political orientation moderates Italians’ endorsement of explicit images of America; in fact, left-wingers see Americans as barbarians, while right-wingers describe them according to the images of father and ally. The present study aims at investigating whether the same divide occurs when images are assessed implicitly. Implicit attitudes and beliefs reflect introspectively unidentified traces of past experience, and it is thus possible that the largely common socialization of left-wing and right-wing Italians results in similar implicit images of America. Results replicated previous differences found at the explicit level. At the implicit level, however, no difference between left-wingers and right-wingers was revealed: for both groups, America was implicitly associated with the image of father. Thus, for left-wing participants, a case of dissociation between explicit and implicit images was detected. Implications of findings for Image Theory and the prediction of intergroup relations are discussed.

Political orientation and images of the United States in Italy

Image theory was used in this study to assess the images that Italian adults with different political ideologies have of the United States. In addition to the ally, barbarian, enemy, and imperialist images, a new image, that of the father, was introduced. It was found that right-wing respondents endorsed the father and ally images of Americans, while left-wing respondents perceived Americans as barbarians. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.