Acute stress has been linked with prosocial behavior, yet it is entirely unexplored how different types of stressors may affect individuals’ willingness to help: This is particularly relevant while people is experiencing multiple sources of stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we explore whether different types of stress influence peoples’ giving behavior and the moderating role of emotional intelligence. Undergraduate students were exposed to experimentally induced social, cognitive, or emotional stress and were asked to self-report on their willingness to (...) help and donate to a charity raising funds for COVID-19 and flu patients. Results showed that when compared to a control condition, after being exposed to a social stress, participants were more willing to help a person in need. Our results also provide evidence that, after experiencing a social stress, participants with high trait EI were more willing to help, and, as a result, donated more. Findings indicate that moderate levels of distress are associated with increased donations. Interestingly, when stress is not too threatening, high EI can regulate it and promote prosocial behaviors. (shrink)

El contexto social actual está protagonizado por una ciudadanía diferenciada o multicultural. La titularidad de derechos fundamentales de los sujetos integrantes y el valor de la dignidad humana como valor cualif icado debe regir las relaciones, incluso en el caso de que tales derechos deban ser limitados. Para Ferrajoli son derechos fundamentales todos aquellos derechos subjetivos que corresponden universalmente a todos los seres humanos en cuanto dotados del status de ciudadanos o personas con capacidad de obrar, entendiendo por derecho subjetivo (...) cualquier expectativa positiva o negativa adscrita a un sujeto por una norma jurídica positiva. Los derechos fundamentales son universales y ese universalismo puede relacionarse, según Ferrajoli, con el multiculturalismo. Dicha universalidad no debe entrar en contraposición con la identidad cultural. (shrink)

Experiences of contact with nature in school education might be beneficial for promoting ecological lifestyles and the wellbeing of children, families, and teachers. Many theories and empirical evidence on restorative environments, as well as on the foundations of classical pedagogical approaches, recognize the value of the direct experience with natural elements, and the related psychological and educational outcomes. In this work we present two studies focusing on the contact with nature in outdoor education interventions with primary and secondary school students (...) in Italy. A questionnaire measuring connectedness to nature, psycho-physical wellbeing, pro-environmental attitudes, students’ life satisfaction, pro-social behavior, empathy and anxiety was completed before and after the education program by the participants to the intervention group and by students of a control group. The students in the intervention groups participated in environmental education programs consisting in guided activities in contact with the nature during four visits in one of two natural protected areas. The students in the control groups attended the same schools as the intervention group but they were not involved in the environmental education program. The students in both the groups completed the questionnaire in the same weeks of the year. Findings show that taking part to the outdoor education program has positive outcomes on psycho-physical wellbeing, on connectedness to nature and on pro-social behavior of students in the intervention group, compared to the control group. The implications related to the effectiveness of outdoor education interventions and future directions of research and practice in environmental psychology and education are discussed. (shrink)

Driving behaviours and fitness to drive have been assessed using different tools over time: standardized neuropsychological, on-road and driving simulation testing. Nowadays, the great variability of topics related to driving simulation has elicited a high number of reviews. The present work aims to perform a scientometric analysis on driving simulation reviews and to propose a selective review of reviews focusing on critical issues related to validity and fidelity. A scientometric analysis of driving simulation reviews published from 1988 to 2019 was (...) conducted. Bibliographic data from 298 reviews were extracted from Scopus and WoS. Performance analysis was conducted to investigate most prolific Countries, Journals, Institutes and Authors. A cluster analysis on authors’ keywords was performed to identify relevant associations between different research topics. Based on reviews extracted from cluster analysis, a selective review of reviews was conducted to answer questions regarding validity, fidelity and critical issues. USA and Germany are the first two Countries for number of driving simulation reviews. USA is the leading Country with 5 Institutes in the top-ten. Top Authors wrote from 3 to 7 reviews each and belong to Institutes located in North America and Europe. Cluster analysis identified three clusters and eight keywords. The selective review of reviews showed a substantial agreement for supporting validity of driving simulation with respect to neuropsychological and on-road testing, while for fidelity with respect to real-world driving experience a blurred representation emerged. The most relevant critical issues were the a) lack of a common set of standards, b) phenomenon of simulation sickness, c) need for psychometric properties, lack of studies investigating d) predictive validity with respect to collision rates and e) ecological validity. Driving simulation represent a cross-cutting topic in scientific literature on driving, and there are several evidences for considering it as a valid alternative to neuropsychological and on-road testing. Further research efforts could be aimed at establishing a consensus statement for protocols assessing fitness to drive, in order to a) use standardized systems, b) compare systematically driving simulators with regard to their validity and fidelity, and c) employ shared criteria for conducting studies in a given sub-topic. (shrink)

This study focuses on the influence of the quality of services received by thalassotherapy customers on their global satisfaction and the relationship between this and the word of mouth. This study uses a hybrid SEM—classification tree analysis. The empirical findings reveal a significant relationship between the quality of each offered service and global satisfaction. This study contributes to identify tourist’s satisfaction or delight on received thalasso services through a proposed methodology. The main contribution of this work consists of the proposal (...) of a methodology to identify objectively through the opinion of tourists if they were satisfied or had reached delight. This work demonstrates, confirming what has been found in previous literature, that global satisfaction is related to the different experiences provided by the service. Thus, all hypotheses are accepted, supporting the hypotheses that relate the pool, the staff, the treatments, and the environment to satisfaction. In addition, the hypotheses that link satisfaction with the word of mouth are also supported. This theoretical implication has important practical implications for managers of the type of facilities such as those studied in this paper, since it shows that it is not enough to do well in one of the services provided if the environment or the interaction with the staff is not right. (shrink)