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This research on press communication uses a synchronic perspective concerning eighteen ministers, balanced by gender, in the Renzi government (in 2014), as well as a diachronic perspective concerning women ministers from five governments (from 2006-2014). The governments in 2014 and of 2013 were predominantly center-left, with the participation of center and center-right parties, whereas the previous governments had technical-professional rather than political ministers (in 2011), center-right (in 2008), and center-left (in 2006) ministers. In the synchronic analysis we explored the different ways in which the ministers are named, the relative presence of sexist/non-sexist, agentive/non-agentive, and abstract/concrete language in which they were presented. The first analysis comprised 332 headlines and the second comprised 1,356 headlines; we conducted a numerical and lexicographical analysis on the headlines. The results showed: more coverage for men than for women; gender biases in naming ministers involving a greater number of citations of women with both first and last name, whereas there were a greater number of citations of men with their first name only; the prevalence of sexist language that uses the generic masculine rather than the specific feminine (that is, the grammatical feminization of a typically masculine form) in representing women; an increment of the specific feminine in representing women in the last three governments over the previous two; no gender differences in the use of "I" and "We" as markers of agency; more quotations of direct discourse for women than for men; language slightly more abstract than concrete, for both men and women; more positive adjectives for women, and more negative adjectives for men. The results are discussed in relation to the international literature and to the Italian cultural-political context. ; peerReviewed ; publishedVersion

This research on press communication uses a synchronic perspective concerning eighteen ministers, balanced by gender, in the Renzi government (in 2014), as well as a diachronic perspective concerning women ministers from five governments (from 2006-2014). The governments in 2014 and of 2013 were predominantly center-left, with the participation of center and center-right parties, whereas the previous governments had technical-professional rather than political ministers (in 2011), center-right (in 2008), and center-left (in 2006) ministers. In the synchronic analysis we explored the different ways in which the ministers are named, the relative presence of sexist/non-sexist, agentive/non-agentive, and abstract/concrete language in which they were presented. The first analysis comprised 332 headlines and the second comprised 1,356 headlines; we conducted a numerical and lexicographical analysis on the headlines. The results showed: more coverage for men than for women; gender biases in naming ministers involving a greater number of citations of women with both first and last name, whereas there were a greater number of citations of men with their first name only; the prevalence of sexist language that uses the generic masculine rather than the specific feminine (that is, the grammatical feminization of a typically masculine form) in representing women; an increment of the specific feminine in representing women in the last three governments over the previous two; no gender differences in the use of "I" and "We" as markers of agency; more quotations of direct discourse for women than for men; language slightly more abstract than concrete, for both men and women; more positive adjectives for women, and more negative adjectives for men. The results are discussed in relation to the international literature and to the Italian cultural-political context.

The moderating effect of the need for closure in the relationship between job insecurity, job performance and mental health was investigated. The need for closure refers to a motivated need for certainty, intolerance of ambiguity and preference for predictability. It was argued that the need for closure may function as a psychological moderator in dealing with job insecurity. Participants comprised 287 workers, who were administered a self-reported questionnaire. Results confirmed the negative relationship between job insecurity, performance and mental health. The need for closure was positively related to job performance and unrelated to mental health. More interestingly, the need for closure exhibited multifaceted patterns of interactions with the different components of job insecurity. Higher need for closure revealed a buffering effect in conditions of higher quantitative job insecurity. In this case, individuals high (vs low) in the need for closure reported better job performance and mental health. Conversely, when qualitative job insecurity was higher, individuals high (vs low) in the need for closure reported an impaired job performance and mental health.

The research has investigated the role of sexist language, gender stereotypes, and roles prescriptions in the political sphere. It was framed in the tradition of social representations. We have studied the impact of specific linguistic categories – relative both to masculine or feminine declination for a Minister's political office, and to the use of references to stereotypical or counterstereotypical behaviours - on 1) the evaluation of political effectiveness, 2) the associations to the stimulus-words Man/Woman Minister, and 3) the ambivalent sexism towards women (ASI of Glick and Fisk, 1996) and men (AMI, Glick and Fisk, 1999). Participants were 830 genderbalanced Italian citizens (55.3% women) recruited in 2016 on a voluntary basis. The ANOVA model showed that the man minister was judged to be more effective in counter-stereotypical than in stereotypical behaviour; the woman minister was rated as more effective in stereotypical behaviour compared to the man in the same condition The associations presented a more stereotypical orientation, with a negative valence for the man minister than the woman minister.

Our starting point is that there are gender differences in the use of language linked to masculine/feminine role identity, and not to alleged essentialist, intrinsic features. The research is a contribution to the understanding of links between linguistic behaviors and socio-psychological processes, as these relate to agency and ingroup/outgroup differentiation and to gender roles. We conducted our descriptive study on 441 parliamentary speeches delivered between 1976 and 2009 by four Italian politicians, differentiated by gender and political affiliation. We expected a higher degree of agency as well as higher ingroup/outgroup differentiation for male than for female politicians with a trend towards a lesser degree of gender differences in the later period (1994-2009) because of the feminine emancipatory processes in the Italian society and parliament. The indicators of high/low agency were: pronouns and verbs in the first person singular/plural, and conditional modal verbs. For the ingroup/outgroup differentiation, we used pronouns in the first and second person plural. We conducted a quantitative textual analysis and a qualitative contextual analysis. Our results confirm the hypothesis in part. We advanced some contextualist considerations to interpret the outcomes.

We investigate gender representations applied to a Ministerial political office, the attitudes towards women in a group of Chinese college students and whether such attitudes are reflected in the representations of the Ministerial political office. These representations were detected, inter alia, by the request of three free associations to the stimulus-words Man/Woman Minister. With the scale of Glick and Fiske (1996), administered after the free associations, we verified the twofactor structure of Ambivalent Sexism (ASI, Hostile / Benevolent Sexism) highlighted in a crosscultural comparison in 19 countries (Glick et al., 2000). The respondents were 181 students at Hangzhou Dianzi University and Zhejiang University (51.4% women; average age about 22 years) contacted in 2016. The results confirmed the two-factor structure of the ASI scale, which explains 31.8% of the total variance, with a first factor of Hostile Sexism (HS) and a second factor of Benevolent Sexism (BS). Textual data revealed a general vocabulary differentiated for Man/Woman Minister. The findings were commented by referring to the literature on stereotypes and gender bias, to the specificity of Chinese cultural context, to the comparison with similar Italian investigations, and also to the reference to political representations.

The most recent literature on gender differences in language use has shown that the Italian political communication enacted by men and women parliamentarians only partly reflects and reproduces the asymmetries and stereotypes widespread in society. Starting from an anti-essentialist perspective, which holds that language differences between men and women speakers are much less extensive than claimed in the past, we analysed 463 parliamentary speeches in the course of the XIVth legislature (5-2001 / 4-2006) in four parliamentarian pairs, differentiated by gender and political orientation. The general aim was to explore the socio-psychological constructs of agency and ingroup/outgroup dynamics as revealed by linguistic behaviour in men/women parliamentarians. The two constructs were detected by specific linguistic markers in the interventions of men/women parliamentarian pairs. Specifically, for agency, we detected: (1a) pronoun variations between singular and plural first person (I, we); (1b) amplitude of we as either specific or superordinate; (1c) conditional modal form of verbs. For ingroup/outgroup dynamics, we detected: (2a) pronoun variation between first and second plural person (we vs. you) and (2b) their valence. Lexicographical analysis was carried out with statistical packages TaLTaC2 and TreeTagger on a corpus of 432,671 words. Chi-square and z-test were applied to word frequencies, while Student's t-tests were applied to gender comparisons. The results showed reduced variability between men/women parliamentarians in the use of linguistic devices, confirming the weakness of the essentialist and binary logic that has long dominated the field of studies on language and gender.

The study considers mass media communication as intertwined with social norms, as assumed by the perspective of social representations. It explores the Italian press communication by focusing on three pairs of men and women politicians with different political orientations and all serving as presidents of the Houses of Parliament in three legislatures. The article concentrates on five newspapers in order to sound out the presence of a possible gender bias in favor of men in the coverage. It explores the strategic use of language to enhance or penalize the role of women politicians. In order to scrutinize the role of gender visibility and discrimination, the study compares how women and men presidents are named and examines the linguistic sexism/nonsexism used for women politicians also in relation to the ideological/cultural orientations of newspapers. Thereby, 591 headlines were collected and analyzed with SPAD-T statistical package. The results, for some cases, confirm the trends revealed in the international literature, in other cases, disprove expectations.

Terrorism has been increasingly viewed as a complex phenomenon imbued with political objectives and media interests. From this perspective, it is crucial to understand how terrorism is socially represented and the role the media plays in creating and molding its image. Using four scales, this study explores the following issues as they relate to normal populations who have no link to terrorism: (1) Terrorist Definitions; (2) Attitudes, Beliefs and Experiences of Terrorism; (3) Immediate Impact of Terrorism; and (4) perceived positive or negative role of the media. Moreover, the study analyzes the role of political orientation and the need for cognitive closure (NFC) in shaping one's representations of terrorism. The sample consists of 409 Italian respondents. Four analyses of main components were conducted. Subsequently, a second-order factor analysis of all four scales generated a three-factor solution that accounts for 51% of the variance. Finally, a correlational analysis of political orientation, NFC, and representations of terrorists and terrorism was performed. Results suggest that more conservative participants, who exhibited a higher NFC, view terrorists as psychologically deviant and criminal. By contrast, left-wing participants, with a lower NFC, view terrorism as a complex phenomenon linked to politics of fear and discrimination. These participants view the media as having a negative role relating to the perpetuation of terrorism. Adapted from the source document.

An experiment was conducted to investigate whether the need for cognitive closure affects the degree of creativity in small groups. Participants in groups of four performed a task in which they had to create advertising slogans for a given product. Some of the groups were composed of individuals with high dispositional need for closure, whereas other groups were composed of individuals with low need for closure. Results showed that ideational fluency, degree of elaboration, and creativity, as rated by independent judges, was lower in high (vs. low) need-for-closure groups. These results suggest that the tendencies to restrict the number of hypotheses generated and to produce conventional ideas, consequences of the need for closure, lower the degree of creativity in interacting groups.