Marco Perugini

The role of desires and anticipated emotions in goal-directed behaviours: Broadening and deepening the theory of planned behaviour

Building on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), we develop a new model of purposive behaviour which suggests that desires are the proximal causes of intentions, and the traditional antecedents in the TPB work through desires. In addition, perceived consequences of goal achievement and goal failure are modelled as anticipated emotions, which also function as determinants of desires. The new model is tested in two studies: an investigation of bodyweight regulation by 108 Italians at the University of Rome and an investigation of effort expended in studying by 122 students at the University of Rome. Frequency and recency of past behaviour are controlled for in tests of hypotheses. The findings show that desires fully mediated the effects of attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and anticipated emotions on intentions. Significantly greater amounts of variance are explained in intentions and behaviour by the new model in comparison to the TPB and variants of the TPB that include either anticipated emotions and/or past behaviour.

A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: solutions from psycholexical studies in seven languages.

Standard psycholexical studies of personality structure have produced a similar 6-factor solution in 7 languages (Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish). The authors report the content of these personality dimensions and interpret them as follows: (a) a variant of Extraversion, defined by sociability and liveliness (though not by bravery and toughness); (b) a variant of Agreeableness, defined by gentleness, patience, and agreeableness (but also including anger and ill temper at its negative pole); (c) Conscientiousness (emphasizing organization and discipline rather than moral conscience); (d) Emotionality (containing anxiety, vulnerability, sentimentality, lack of bravery, and lack of toughness, but not anger or ill temper); (e) Honesty-Humility; (f) Intellect/Imagination/Unconventionality. A potential reorganization of the Big Five factor structure is discussed.

Evaluative Conditioning in Humans: A Meta-Analysis

This article presents a meta-analysis of research on evaluative conditioning (EC), defined as a change in the liking of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) that results from pairing that stimulus with other positive or negative stimuli (unconditioned stimulus; US). Across a total of 214 studies included in the main sample, the mean EC effect was d = .52, with a 95% confidence interval of .466-.582. As estimated from a random-effects model, about 70% of the variance in effect sizes were attributable to true systematic variation rather than sampling error. Moderator analyses were conducted to partially explain this variation, both as a function of concrete aspects of the procedural implementation and as a function of the abstract aspects of the relation between CS and US. Among a range of other findings, EC effects were stronger for high than for low contingency awareness, for supraliminal than for subliminal US presentation, for postacquisition than for postextinction effects, and for self-report than for implicit measures. These findings are discussed with regard to the procedural boundary conditions of EC and theoretical accounts about the mental processes underlying EC.

Recommendations for increasing replicability in psychology

Replicability of findings is at the heart of any empirical science. The aim of this article is to move the current replicability debate in psychology towards concrete recommendations for improvement. We focus on research practices but also offer guidelines for reviewers, editors, journal management, teachers, granting institutions, and university promotion committees, highlighting some of the emerging and existing practical solutions that can facilitate implementation of these recommendations. The challenges for improving replicability in psychological science are systemic. Improvement can occur only if changes are made at many levels of practice, evaluation, and reward. Copyright

The “big five questionnaire”: A new questionnaire to assess the five factor model

Abstract In this paper a new questionnaire for the measurement of the Big Five Factor Model (which includes the factors Extraversion, Agreeableness or Friendliness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability or Neuroticism, and Intellect or Openness to Experience) is presented. The various steps in the development of the questionnaire involved more than 1000 subjects. Internal validity (factorial structure), convergent and discriminant validity, internal consistency and temporal stability, and sex differences in the scale scores are discussed.

Predictive models of implicit and explicit attitudes

Explicit attitudes have long been assumed to be central factors influencing behaviour. A recent stream of studies has shown that implicit attitudes, typically measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT), can also predict a significant range of behaviours. This contribution is focused on testing different predictive models of implicit and explicit attitudes. In particular, three main models can be derived from the literature: (a) additive (the two types of attitudes explain different portion of variance in the criterion), (b) double dissociation (implicit attitudes predict spontaneous whereas explicit attitudes predict deliberative behaviour), and (c) multiplicative (implicit and explicit attitudes interact in influencing behaviour). This paper reports two studies testing these models. The first study (N = 48) is about smoking behaviour, whereas the second study (N = 109) is about preferences for snacks versus fruit. In the first study, the multiplicative model is supported, whereas the double dissociation model is supported in the second study. The results are discussed in light of the importance of focusing on different patterns of prediction when investigating the directive influence of implicit and explicit attitudes on behaviours.

The personal norm of reciprocity

Reciprocity is here considered as an internalized social norm, and a questionnaire to measure individual differences in the internalized norm of reciprocity is presented. The questionnaire, Personal Norm of Reciprocity (PNR), measures three aspects of reciprocity: positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, and beliefs in reciprocity. The PNR has been developed and tested in two cultures, British and Italian, for a total of 951 participants. A cross‐cultural study provides evidence of good psychometric properties and generalizability of the PNR. Data provide evidence for criterion validity and show that positive and negative reciprocators behave in different ways as a function of the valence (positive or negative) of the others past behaviour, the type of feasible reaction (reward versus punishment), and the fairness of their reaction. Copyright

Redefine Statistical Significance

We propose to change the default P-value threshold for statistical significance from 0.05 to 0.005 for claims of new discoveries.

Personality described by adjectives: the generalizability of the Big Five to the Italian lexical context

Two studies have been performed in the frame of the Big Five model to describe personality. In the first study, the most useful adjectives for describing personality have been selected, trying to adopt a procedure as objective and empirically driven as possible. The resulting pool of adjectives (n = 492) has been administered to a sample of 274 subjects to verify the emergence of the Big Five in the Italian context. In the second study the pool of original adjectives has been reduced to 260 adjectives selecting the most representative terms (with regard to the factorial structure that has emerged). This pool of 260 adjectives has been administered to a sample of 862 subjects, together with the NEO‐PI and the BFQ to facilitate the interpretation of the resulting factorial structure. Results showed the emergence of an Italian Big Five factorial structure that resembles the ‘canonical’ Big Five, although some of the factors, viz. Agreeableness and Emotional Stability, emerged as ‘blended’ dimensions.

Individual differences in sensitivity to health communications: consideration of future consequences.

There are reliable individual differences in the extent to which people consider the long- and short-term consequences of their behaviors. Such differences, assessed by the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) Scale (A. Strathman, F. Gleicher, D. S. Boninger, & C. S. Edwards, 1994), are hypothesized to influence the impact of a persuasive communication. In an experimental study, the time frame of occurrence of positive and negative consequences of engaging in a new colorectal cancer-screening program was manipulated in a sample of two hundred twenty 50-69-year-old men and women. CFC moderated (a) the processing of short- versus long-term consequences and (b) the persuasive impact of the different communications on behavioral intentions. Low CFC individuals produced more positive thoughts and were more persuaded when positive consequences were short term and negative consequences were long term. The opposite was true for high CFC individuals.