Renato Foschi

The concept of personality in 19th-century French and 20th-century American psychology.

Since the 1920s, the road to the acknowledgement of personality psychology as a field of scientific psychology that has individuality as its object began with the founding of the discipline by Gordon W. Allport. Historians of psychology have made serious attempts to reconstruct the cultural, political, institutional, and chronological beginnings of this field in America in the 20th century. In this literature, however, an important European tradition of psychological studies of personality that developed in France in the 2nd half of the 19th century has been overlooked. The aim of this article is to cast some light on this unexplored tradition of psychological personality studies and to discuss its influence on the development of the scientific study of personality in the United States.

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.

The European Origins of Personality Psychology

The year 1937 is remembered by historians of psychology as the year of the birth of personality psychology. This discipline emerged in the United States thanks to the work of several psychologists who came to organize its methodology and fundamental notions. Gordon Allport is the most important representative of this change within scientific psychology. This paper analyzes the continuity between “before” and “after” the foundation of the discipline and locates several important points of reference for the initial scientific research on personality. The aim of this essay is to reconstruct historically the contribution of some important lines of “European” psychological research that have had a remarkable influence both from the theoretical and methodological points of view on the scientific foundation of personality psychology studies in its modern developments.

Attitude Toward Ambiguity: Empirically Robust Factors in Self-Report Personality Scales.

Two studies were conducted to examine the factor structure of attitude toward ambiguity, a broad personality construct that refers to personal reactions to perceived ambiguous stimuli in a variety of context and situations. Using samples from two countries, Study 1 mapped the hierarchical structure of 133 items from seven tolerance–intolerance of ambiguity scales (N = 360, Italy; N = 306, United States). Three major factors—Discomfort with Ambiguity, Moral Absolutism/Splitting, and Need for Complexity and Novelty—were recovered in each country with high replicability coefficients across samples. In Study 2 (N = 405, Italian community sample; N =366, English native speakers sample), we carried out a confirmatory analysis on selected factor markers. A bifactor model had an acceptable fit for each sample and reached the construct-level invariance for general and group factors. Convergent validity with related traits was assessed in both studies. We conclude that attitude toward ambiguity can be best represented a multidimensional construct involving affective (Discomfort with Ambiguity), cognitive (Moral Absolutism/Splitting), and epistemic (Need for Complexity and Novelty) components.

ITALIAN PSYCHOLOGY UNDER PROTECTION: Agostino Gemelli Between Catholicism and Fascism

Between the 1930s and 1940s, Agostino Gemelli (1878-1959) was the main Italian psychologist; he accepted and promoted an empirical conception of psychology influenced by neo-Thomism. The views of Gemelli were a landmark for many psychologists and psychological models in Catholic universities. Gemelli, moreover, throughout his scientific activity, continued ongoing work of expertise in matters concerning science, morality, and psychology. He was a Franciscan monk but also an officer of the Italian air force, a psychologist, and a rector. During the period of fascist rule in Italy, Gemelli sought compromise solutions to foster the survival of psychological institutions. Around his story, contrasting interpretations have emerged. The aim of this article is to look at Agostino Gemelli as an important historical subject to understand the ways in which scientific enterprises and institutions are likely to be influenced by political regimes and by the dogmatic and intolerant milieu. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Do Amoral Familism and Political Distrust Really Affect North–South Differences in Italy?

Especially in southern Italy, Banfield’s amoral familism is considered an obstacle to the formation of associations and growth of political participation. This article discusses Banfield’s concept, showing that it has been vulgarized merely as familism and, in particular, demonstrates that Banfield intended amoral familism to be understood in terms of political distrust. We investigated whether amoral familism or political distrust, operationalized as an individual difference variable, mediated the relationships between personality traits, personal values, and conventional and unconventional political acts, controlling for differences in political attitude. We recruited 405 participants, distributed across north, central, and southern Italy, to complete a questionnaire on political participation that also assessed Big Five personality factors, values, sociability and political attitude (expertise, interest, self-efficacy), and a new scale assessing amoral familism as a form of political distrust. Regression analyses were used to identify the best predictors of political acts, then structural equation modeling was used to test a model of political participation. Like political attitudes, familism mediated the relationships between personality traits, especially “openness to experience” and “taking conventional and unconventional political acts.” However, our data do not confirm the stereotype that northern and southern Italians differ in their tendency to amoral familism as defined by Banfield.

Galileo, Measurement of the Velocity of Light, and the Reaction Times:

According to the commonly accepted view, Galileo Galilei devised in 1638 an experiment that seemed able to show that the velocity of light is finite. An analysis of archival material shows that two decades later members of the Florence scientific society Accademia del Cimento followed Galileo guidelines by actually attempting to measure the velocity of light and suggesting improvements. This analysis also reveals a fundamental difference between Galileos and Florence academys methodologies and that Galileos experiment was, in some respects, a pioneering work affecting also the history of the psychology of perception.

The Intolerance of Uncertainty Inventory: Validity and Comparison of Scoring Methods to Assess Individuals Screening Positive for Anxiety and Depression

Intolerance of Uncertainty is a fundamental transdiagnostic personality construct hierarchically organized with a core general factor underlying diverse clinical manifestations. The current study evaluated the construct validity of the Intolerance of Uncertainty Inventory, a two-part scale separately assessing a unitary Intolerance of Uncertainty disposition to consider uncertainties to be unacceptable and threatening (Part A) and the consequences of such disposition, regarding experiential avoidance, chronic doubt, overestimation of threat, worrying, control of uncertain situations, and seeking reassurance (Part B). Community members (N = 1046; Mean age = 36.69 ± 12.31 years; 61% females) completed the Intolerance of Uncertainty Inventory with the Beck Depression Inventory-II and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Part A demonstrated a robust unidimensional structure and an excellent convergent validity with Part B. A bifactor model was the best fitting model for Part B. Based on these results, we compared the hierarchical factor scores with summated ratings clinical proxy groups reporting anxiety and depression symptoms. Summated rating scores were associated with both depression and anxiety and proportionally increased with the co-occurrence of depressive and anxious symptoms. By contrast, hierarchical scores were useful to detect which facets mostly separated between for depression and anxiety groups. In sum, Part A was a reliable and valid transdiagnostic measure of Intolerance of Uncertainty. The Part B was arguably more useful for assessing clinical manifestations of Intolerance of Uncertainty for specific disorders, provided that hierarchical scores are used. Overall, our study suggest that clinical assessments might need to shift toward hierarchical factor scores.

Psicopatologia e demonologia. La "diagnosi" di possessione nel corso del XX secolo

Young (2016) ha recentemente notato una reviviscenza dell’idea della presenza del Diavolo e della pratica dell’esorcismo nel mondo attuale. Questo articolo ricostruisce la storia della demonologia cattolica, in relazione alla psicopatologia e alla psicoterapia. I demoni, nel corso della storia, sono stati considerati alla stregua di entita reali e concrete, e identificati come responsabili di malattie psichiche e fisiche, e per disastri nel mondo naturale. L’articolo sottolinea come l’esorcismo sia sopravvissuto all’affermarsi della psicoterapia perche, all’interno della teologia e della cultura cattolica, si e avuta una pervicace resistenza contro un’interpretazione in termini simbolici e metaforici della figura del Diavolo. I tentativi di secolarizzare il concetto di Diavolo - per esempio introducendo il cosiddetto Effetto Lucifero (Zimbardo, 2007) - non sono stati completamente coronati da successo. In alcuni specifici ambienti di psicoterapia a ispirazione cattolica, la credenza nel Diavolo e ancora attiva, come possibile spiegazione di fenomeni bizzarri, estremi o altrimenti inesplicabili.

“A disease of our time”: The Catholic Church's condemnation and absolution of psychoanalysis (1924-1975)

The present paper is focused on the evolution of the position of the Catholic Church toward psychoanalysis. Even before Freuds The Future of an Illusion (1927), psychoanalysis was criticized by Catholic theologians. Psychoanalysis was viewed with either contempt or with indifference, but nonpsychoanalytic psychotherapy was accepted, especially for pastoral use. Freudian theory remained for most Catholics a delicate and dangerous subject for a long time. From the center to the periphery of the Vatican, Catholic positions against psychoanalysis have varied in the way that theological stances have varied. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, some Catholics changed their attitudes and even practiced psychoanalysis, challenging the interdict of the Holy Office, which prohibited psychoanalytic practice until 1961. During the Cold War, psychoanalysis progressively became more and more relevant within Catholic culture for two main reasons: changes in psychoanalytic doctrine (which began to stress sexuality to a lesser degree) and the increasing number of Catholic psychoanalysts, even among priests. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, psychoanalysis was eventually accepted and became the main topic of a famous speech by Pope Paul VI. This paper illustrates how this acceptance was a sort of unofficial endorsement of a movement that had already won acceptance within the Church. The situation was fostered by people like Maryse Choisy or Leonardo Ancona, who had advocated within the Church for a sui generis use of psychoanalysis (e.g., proposing a desexualized version of Freudian theories), despite warnings and prohibitions from the hierarchies of the Church.