Marco Lauriola

Personality traits and risky decision-making in a controlled experimental task: an exploratory study

This paper first discusses historic differences in the way that personality psychologists and decision-making researchers have studied risk-taking, and then describes a preliminary study that combines elements of the two approaches. Using an Italian sample of varying age levels, this study examined the relations among personality traits (the Big-Five), demographics (age and gender) and risk-taking. Separate measures of risk-taking in a controlled experimental task were derived for trials in which subjects could achieve a gain and for trials in which subjects could avoid a loss. Personality trait effects differed for gains and for losses, and they differed depending on whether demographics were taken into account. Personality factors predicted risk-taking primarily in the domain of gains where high scores on Openness to Experience were associated with greater risk-taking and high scores on Neuroticism were associated with less risk-taking. However, there was a tendency for Neuroticism to have the opposite effect on risk-taking for losses where high scores were associated with greater risk-taking.

On the dimensionality of the System Usability Scale: a test of alternative measurement models

The System Usability Scale (SUS), developed by Brooke (Usability evaluation in industry, Taylor & Francis, London, pp 189–194, 1996), had a great success among usability practitioners since it is a quick and easy to use measure for collecting users’ usability evaluation of a system. Recently, Lewis and Sauro (Proceedings of the human computer interaction international conference (HCII 2009), San Diego CA, USA, 2009) have proposed a two-factor structure—Usability (8 items) and Learnability (2 items)—suggesting that practitioners might take advantage of these new factors to extract additional information from SUS data. In order to verify the dimensionality in the SUS’ two-component structure, we estimated the parameters and tested with a structural equation model the SUS structure on a sample of 196 university users. Our data indicated that both the unidimensional model and the two-factor model with uncorrelated factors proposed by Lewis and Sauro (Proceedings of the human computer interaction international conference (HCII 2009), San Diego CA, USA, 2009) had a not satisfactory fit to the data. We thus released the hypothesis that Usability and Learnability are independent components of SUS ratings and tested a less restrictive model with correlated factors. This model not only yielded a good fit to the data, but it was also significantly more appropriate to represent the structure of SUS ratings.

A Tale of Two Pizzas: Building Up from a Basic Product Versus Scaling Down from a Fully-Loaded Product

Consumers in the U.S. and Italy were asked to either build up from a consumable base product (pizza) by adding components or scale down from a fully-loaded product by subtracting components. In each country consumers ended up with significantly more ingredients, and a pizza for a higher cost, in the Scale Down Condition than in the Build Up Condition. Results are discussed in terms of the principle of “loss aversion” underlying phenomena such as “the endowment effect,” marketing implications of this effect, and future research needs.

World Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule II: Contribution to the Italian validation

Introduction. The World Health Organisation Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS II) is an instrument developed by the World Health Organisation in order to assess behavioural limitations and restrictions to participation experienced by an individual, independently from a medical diagnosis. The conceptual frame of reference of this instrument is the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: ICF. Specifically, the instrument is designed to evaluate the functioning of the individual in six activity domains: Understanding and communicating, Getting around, Self-care, Getting along with people, Life activities, Participation in society. Purposes. Considering the widespread consent about the usefulness of the WHODAS II, the general aim of the present study is to provide a contribution to the validation of the Italian version. Method. The WHODAS II Italian version has been administered to a sample of 500 participants subdivided in two groups: 271 normal adults and 229 disabled adults. The disabled participants group has been subdivided in three sub-groups, according to their disability: 111 motor disabled, 45 mental disabled, 73 sensory disabled. Results. The mean Total score of the WHODAS II is 12.95 for the normal adults and 22.93 for the disabled group. Either group obtains the least impairment in the Self-care domain. This could be probably due to the presence of social-health workers in everyday life for all Italian disabled people. For the three disabled participant groups separately computed the mean Total score is: 28.66 for the motor disabled, 24.60 for the mental disabled, and 14.97 for the sensory disabled, confirming that sensory disabled do not perceive their disability as a personal functioning problem but a socially constructed one. Some subscales of WHODAS II show relatively strong floor effects. The Cronbachs Alpha calculated for each of the subscales is found to be high. The correlations of the subscales show strong correlations in all subscales. Conclusions. The WHODAS II is a useful instrument for measuring disability and functioning in normal and disabled people. It shows high reliability and a stable factor structure; although an additional psychometric evaluation of a representative sample of Italian disabled should be carried out in order to reach standard scores for each macro-category of disability.

A neuropsychological approach to understanding risk-taking for potential gains and losses

Affective neuroscience has helped guide research and theory development in judgment and decision-making by revealing the role of emotional processes in choice behavior, especially when risk is involved. Evidence is emerging that qualitatively and quantitatively different processes may be involved in risky decision-making for gains and losses. We start by reviewing behavioral work by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and others, which shows that risk-taking differs for potential gains and potential losses. We then turn to the literature in decision neuroscience to support the gain versus loss distinction. Relying in part on data from a new task that separates risky decision-making for gains and losses, we test a neural model that assigns unique mechanisms for risky decision-making involving potential losses. Included are studies using patients with lesions to brain areas specified as important in the model and studies with healthy individuals whose brains are scanned to reveal activation in these and other areas during risky decision-making. In some cases, there is evidence that gains and losses are processed in different regions of the brain, while in other cases the same region appears to process risk in a different manner for gains and losses. At a more general level, we provide strong support for the notion that decisions involving risk-taking for gains and decisions involving risk-taking for losses represent different psychological processes. At a deeper level, we present mounting evidence that different neural structures play different roles in guiding risky choices in these different domains. Some structures are differentially activated by risky gains and risky losses while others respond uniquely in one domain or the other. Taken together, these studies support a clear functional dissociation between risk-taking for gains and risk-taking for losses, and further dissociation at the neural level.

Emotion regulation and risk taking: Predicting risky choice in deliberative decision making

Only very recently has research demonstrated that experimentally induced emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) affect risky choice (e.g., Heilman et al., 2010). However, it is unknown whether this effect also operates via habitual use of emotion regulation strategies in risky choice involving deliberative decision making. We investigated the role of habitual use of emotion regulation strategies in risky choice using the “cold” deliberative version of the Columbia Card Task (CCT; Figner et al., 2009). Fifty-three participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003) and—one month later—the CCT and the PANAS. Greater habitual cognitive reappraisal use was related to increased risk taking, accompanied by decreased sensitivity to changes in probability and loss amount. Greater habitual expressive suppression use was related to decreased risk taking. The results show that habitual use of reappraisal and suppression strategies predict risk taking when decisions involve predominantly cognitive-deliberative processes.

Dimensions of health-related dispositions in elderly people: relationships with health behaviour and personality traits

The principal aim of this study was to examine a health‐related disposition construct in elderly Italians by explorative factor analysis of the Multidimensional Health Questionnaire. The questionnaire had a two‐factor structure. The first factor was loaded by cognitive variables such as Health‐Efficacy, Health Control, Optimism, etc.; it predicted compliance with self‐rating health seeking behaviours and it was correlated with personality traits such as Emotional Stability and the Lie scale. The second factor comprised emotional dispositions including Health Anxiety, Health Depression, Health Preoccupation, etc. and it was negatively associated with Conscientiousness and Energy. Interesting results emerged for sex by age differences in both health factors. Moreover, men and women showed different correlation patterns between the health factors and the Five Factor Model. Copyright

Does Positivity Mediate the Relation of Extraversion and Neuroticism with Subjective Happiness

Recent theories suggest an important role of neuroticism, extraversion, attitudes, and global positive orientations as predictors of subjective happiness. We examined whether positivity mediates the hypothesized relations in a community sample of 504 adults between the ages of 20 and 60 years old (females = 50%). A model with significant paths from neuroticism to subjective happiness, from extraversion and neuroticism to positivity, and from positivity to subjective happiness fitted the data (Satorra–Bentler scaled chi-square (38) = 105.91; Comparative Fit Index = .96; Non-Normed Fit Index = .95; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = .060; 90% confidence interval = .046, .073). The percentage of subjective happiness variance accounted for by personality traits was only about 48%, whereas adding positivity as a mediating factor increased the explained amount of subjective happiness to 78%. The mediation model was invariant by age and gender. The results show that the effect of extraversion on happiness was fully mediated by positivity, whereas the effect of neuroticism was only partially mediated. Implications for happiness studies are also discussed.

Self-regulation predicts risk-taking through people's time horizon.

In the context of decision-making research, peoples regulatory orientation mode (i.e., assessment and locomotion modes) has been included among the most prominent individual difference variables, which may potentially account for choice behaviour. Thus, the main objective of our experiment was to investigate the relations between habitual use of regulatory mode and risk-taking through peoples time horizon. Risk-taking was appraised using a behavioural measure (i.e., BART) 1 month following evaluation of habitual use of regulatory mode. The findings revealed a significant negative association between the assessment mode and risk-taking through individual differences in time horizon.

Does sociability predict civic involvement and political participation

In contemporary history as well as in political science, a strong associational life known as sociability is thought to explain the roots of modern democracy by establishing a link between the increasing availability of free time to the middle classes, increasing willingness to gather with others in circles or associations, and increasing social capital. In personality psychology, sociability is related to prosocial behavior (i.e., the need for affiliation, agreeableness, openness, and extraversion), whose importance in different political behaviors is increasingly recognized. In the present article, we carried out 5 studies (N = 1,429) that showed that political and associative sociability (a) can be reliably assessed, can have cross-cultural validity, and are properly associated with general social interest measures and personality domains and facets in the five-factor model; (b) do not overlap with similar concepts used in political psychology to account for political participation (political expertise, political interest, political self-efficacy); and (c) predicted political and nonpolitical group membership as well as observable choices in decision-making tasks with political and nonpolitical outcomes. The results are discussed, taking into consideration the extent to which specific facets of sociability can mediate between general personality traits and measures of civic involvement and political participation in a holistic model of political behavior.