P. Bonaiuto

Personality and Cigarette Smoking in Italy, Poland, and the United States

This study reports data on over 700 young adults, undergraduate and medical students attending the University of Vermont, the University of Rome, and the Warsaw Medical Academy. Each subject provided information about cigarette smoking history and completed several personality, Type A, and life events inventories. Subjects were classified as nonsmoker, ex-smoker, and smoker. Each measure was analyzed by ANOVA on this basis, with gender and country as additional main effects. Smokers were found to have higher state anxiety, a lower lie score, and were more Type A than ex-smokers and nonsmokers, but they tended to report fewer life events and of lower value.

Measurement of the Type A behavior pattern in adolescents and young adults: cross-cultural development of AATAB.

This paper reports psychometric development of a new scale, the AATAB, a 19-item questionnaire which attempts to measure the Type A behavior pattern in the adolescent and in the young adult. Initial studies were accomplished with Polish secondary-school students. Test-retest and internal consistency reliability estimates were very adequate, as was concurrent validity. Construct validity information is scant but in the desired direction. Factor analytical studies reveal only a single-factor structure on these adolescent subjects. The AATAB was given to university students of both sexes in Poland, Italy, and the United States. Students from all three countries scored at about the same level and concurrent validity was acceptable. Factor analysis of these data revealed meaningful factors for both sexes across all three cultures. While similar factors were found, the order of them was different by sex and by culture. These results are discussed and further reliability and validity research with the AATAB is outlined.

Personality dimensions and cigarette smoking behavior in polish and U.S. adolescents

Abstract To contribute to the design of adequate intervention and prevention programs, data on smoking behavior were collected from over 300 male and female 15 year olds from Poland and the United States, approximately half from each country. Several personality measures were obtained from each subject. Fifty of these students were already smoking and over 100 more had tried cigarettes. Results indicate that for both countries, smokers had a characteristic personality profile which included being anxious, angry, and impulsive/antisocial. In short they appear to be emotionally distressed and females were more extreme than males in this regard. Possible intervention and prevention strategies and future needed research are discussed.

Measurement of the type A behavior pattern from adolescence through midlife: further development of the adolescent/adult type A behavior scale (AATABS)

We reported in 1990 the development of the Adolescent/Adult Type A Behavior Scale (AATABS). While the measure showed considerable promise, improvements to its component structure were indicated. The present study reports such modifications and also provides data on the use of the new scale, the AATABS-R, with middle-aged subjects as well as young adults from the United States.

Measures of Emotional and Motivational Processes Activated by Stress or Comfort Conditions

Under stress conditions, obtained in the field or experimentally induced, changes occur in the nature and intensity of affective processes (emotions, motivations). Symmetrical changes occur under opposite (comfort) conditions. One of the first procedures for determining temporary stress states consists of administering difficult logical tasks (15 minutes), with erroneous or ambiguous feedback and social pressure. For example, some very difficult Raven Matrices were individually assigned to participants. The first two authors later found another procedure equally effective and even more advantageous for certain aspects: the “drawing recollection” of personal stressful experiences. The corresponding comfort treatments are, firstly, a progressive relaxation session in penumbra; or, in the second case, the “drawing recollection” of personal pleasant and positive experiences. To assess the emotional changes, we prepared seven-point bipolar scales centering on the main opposing emotions. As regards motivations, we used a list of nine motivational systems [1]. The whole set of items made up the so-called Self-Appraisal Scales, administered before and after a specific treatment, thereby obtaining a measure through the differences between the two successive assessments. Factor analyses were conducted for selecting the main emotional and motivational factors. Affective reverberations on cognitive processes were also studied and measured.

Visual illusory productions with or without amodal completion.

A new type of illusory contour is presented whose appearance is generated by the graphic representation of groups of human figures interacting in a coordinated manner with external reality. When numerous pictorial indicators of cause-effect relationships are provided, and appropriate techniques and sufficiently ambiguous observation conditions are used, hallucinatory objects congruent with expectations linked to the meaning of the configurations appear. There is thus a high-level semantic component that is active in the formation of visual illusory contours and is even capable of interacting with other known factors: brightness contrast, the number of elements, the degree of alignment of the elements, etc. This new type of illusory contour fits current definitions and can be experimentally modified. The variations in subjective clarity scores are presented for a study in which twenty subjects observed nineteen experimental figures, certain variables of which were manipulated. The issue is worthy of further experimental investigation.

The aesthetic component in teaching communication

Description of a series of investigations on the relationship between use of films in teaching psychology, emotions triggered, learning and other effects in the learner, with particular reference to the role of the aesthetic components of the process to fruition.

Alcohol use and personality relationships in U.S. and polish adolescents

To obtain information, which could be useful to the design of intervention and prevention programs for adolescent alcohol users and potential users, personality and alcohol use data were collected from over 300 Polish and U.S. 15-year-olds. Thirty percent of these subjects were already drinking on a more or less consistent basis. Users were angry, nonconforming, and impulsive-antisocial persons in both countries. Future research and potential intervention and prevention strategies are discussed.

Special Image Contents, Personality Features, and Aesthetic Preferences

The theory of aesthetic emotion predicts higher aesthetic appraisals when images fit the beholders main motivations, and, moreover, a relative equivalence between representations of violent scenes or incongruent configurations sensu strictu (Bonaiuto, 1966, 1983, 1998). Our new study aimed to specify distinctions among conflictual images, providing insights into taste formation processes that prefigure substantial differences found in studies on adulthood. Ten pairs of color laser reproductions of paintings by great artists were prepared, contrasting harmonious configurations with scenes strongly contradicting expectations. Five pairs contained an openly aggressive scene juxtaposed by a calm one; the others a structurally very incongruous picture juxtaposed by a congruent one. We first examined 500 children (7-10 years old), with appropriate scales, selecting two extreme subgroups: very aggressive and pro-social subjects (“altruists”). The image pairs were individually presented, recording the preferences. Data show a clear rejection of aggressive images by altruists, and attraction for such images in aggressive participants. The latter, nevertheless, had a greater liking for the incongruous images, that more indirectly and symbolically correspond to destructive drives. Socio-cultural variables were found to be non-influential.

Investigation on Piero Della Francesca's Frescoes

This investigation focuses on the Legend of the True Cross, Piero della Francescas important series of frescoes (15th century) kept in Arezzo (Italy). We dealt with the expressiveness of the figures according to shapes, colors, and other features. We referred to the phenomenological classification by Arnheim (1949), Metzger (1954, 1966), and Bonaiuto (1965, 1988), who, among expressive qualities and valences, distinguished emotional hues, intentions, functions, causal relations, etc. Ninety adults evaluated affective expressiveness in each of three actual frescoes using an inventory with 46 11-point monopolar scales. Three distinct groups of scales were statistically distinguished: “positive,” “negative,” and “neutral” affects. The peculiarities of each fresco as measured by the scales emerged clearly, underlying the modern legibility of the expressiveness constructed by the artist. Comparisons of the pictorial style of Piero della Francesca with previous and later Renaissance artists and modern artists are described.