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The aim of the research was to conduct a survey on a large scale, in different Countries (Austria, France, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Taiwan, USA) to investigate several psychological and pedagogical features like personality traits, motivations, emotions, attitudes and learning processes regarding the museum visit experience. The sample was composed by young adult-university students. Some findings show, among several data, that about the 25% of the whole sample did not visit any museum in the previous year and Modern art museums were the most visited types of museums.

I gesti di un parlante sono percepiti ed elaborati differentemente dai riceventi secondo la loro (in)coerenza con il parlato (Kelly et al., 2007). I movimenti delle mani, inoltre, influenzano in modo diverso le valutazioni dell’audience rispetto al parlante, in particolare in termini di competenza, ma non in termini di calore o in termini di persuasività (Maricchiolo et al., 2009). Sono necessari dunque studi che approfondiscano la conoscenza dei processi psicologici che portano a questi effetti sulla percezione e valutazione. Tra questi processi, l’attenzione focale (Yantis, 1998), misurata attraverso le fissazioni oculari (Levi et al. 1985), potrebbe essere considerato un processo rilevante e facilmente operazionalizzabile e misurabile (Duchowski, 2007). Nonostante questo, sono stati condotti ancora pochi studi sulla fissazione oculare dei gesti di un parlante da parte dell’audience: sono state pubblicate solo delle evidenze qualitative (es., Gullmerg & Holmqvist, 2006); ma non sono stati ancora condotti studi volti a registrare contemporaneamente fissazioni oculari e valutazioni del parlante e del messaggio, che è invece l’obiettivo dello studio presentato. Le ipotesi del presente studio infatti sono: a) diversi tipi di gesti hanno diversi effetti sulle valutazioni di competenza e persuasività secondo il pattern conosciuto in letteratura; b) diversi tipi di gesti sono fissati differentemente, cioè i gesti più coerenti con il discorso, dunque più efficaci riceverebbero meno attenzione focale (dunque meno fissazioni; ad esempio, potrebbero essere elaborati automaticamente) rispetto ai movimenti delle mani meno efficaci. È stato condotto un esperimento su 50 studenti per valutare gli effetti dei diversi gesti e movimenti delle mani sulle fissazioni dei riceventi e sulle loro valutazioni del parlante di un messaggio a scopo persuasivo. In questo studi i dati sono stati raccolti mentre i soggetti visionavano uno dei quattro messaggi costruiti ad hoc. In ciascun messaggio il parlante produceva un unico tipo di gesti delle mani secondo 4 livelli di congruenza con il parlato: 1) solo gesti ideativi (molto coerenti con il parlato), 2) solo gesti conversazionali, 3) solo oggetto adattatori; 4) solo auto-adattatori (meno congruenti con il parlato). La quantità di fissazioni oculari era misurata durante la visione del video messaggio, mentre le valutazioni, attraverso un questionario, alla fine. I risultati delle analisi statistiche confermano che i gesti incongruenti con il verbale sono più fissati dei congruenti (ipotesi b) e valutati come meno efficaci in termini di competenza e meno persuasivi rispetto ai più congruenti con il parlato (ipotesi a). questi risultati suggeriscono che, nonostante i gesti congruenti con il parlato non ricevano una fissazione foveale (probabilmente perché percepiti come integrati con il parlato), essi sono comunque elaborati dal ricevente, poiché essi fanno percepire il parlante come più competente e persuasivo. Gli adattatori, caratterizzati da una mancanza di congruenza sia con il contenuto sia con la struttura del parlato, sono maggiormente fissati: quindi ricevono maggiore attenzione focale essendo trattati come informazioni fuori dal contesto (Wright & Ward, 2008). Esperimenti futuri potrebbero tentare di manipolare la fissazione oculare su singoli tipi di gesti al fine di valutare il ruolo causale e/o di mediazione della fissazione dei gesti sulle valutazioni di competenza e persuasività del parlante da parte dell’audience. - Gestures of a speaker are differently perceived and processed by receivers according to their (in)congruence with the speech (Kelly et al., 2007). Hand movements, moreover, differently affect audience evaluation of the speaker, in particular for competence but not for warmth traits, and for speaker's and message's persuasiveness (Maricchiolo et al., 2009). More studies are now needed in order to understand the psychological processes accounting for these perceptual and evaluation effects. Among the possible processes, focal attention (Yantis, 1998), as measured through eye-fixations (Levi et al., 1985), could be a relevant one as a process which can be operationalized and measured in a relatively easy way (Duchowski, 2007). So far, very few studies have been conducted on the audience eye-fixation of a speaker's hand gesture: just qualitative evidence has been published (e.g., Gullmerg & Holmqvist, 2006); while no studies have been carried out in order to record simultaneously eye-fixation and speaker and message evaluations. The hypotheses of the present study are: a) different kind of gestures/movements have different effects on competence and persuasiveness evaluations, according to the pattern known from the literature; b) different kind of gestures/movements are differently fixated, according to a pattern where most efficacious (speech-congruent) gestures/movements would receive less focal attention (e.g., they could be processed more automatically) than less efficacious gestures/hand movements. An experiment on 50 undergraduates was carried out to evaluate the effects of different hand gestures and movements on receivers’ eye-fixations and evaluation of the speaker of a persuasive video-message. In the present study, data were collected while viewing four ad hoc video-messages. In each video the speaker performed only one kind of hand movements along four speech-congruence levels: 1) only ideational gestures (most speech-congruent), 2) only conversational gestures, 3) only object-adaptors, 4) only self-adaptors (least speech-congruent movements). The amount of receivers’ eye-fixations during the vision and the receivers’ evaluations at the end were measured. Statistical analyses confirm that speech-incongruent gestures were more fixated by the receiver (hypothesis b) and subsequently evaluated as less effective (in terms of speaker competence) and less persuasive than speech-congruent gestures (hypothesis a). Such results suggest that, although speech-congruent gestures are not foveally fixated (probably because they are perceived as integrated with the speech), they are however processed by the receivers, because these gestures allow perceiving the speaker as more competent and persuasive. Adaptors, characterized by lack of congruence with either content or structure of the speech, are more fixated: therefore they receive more focal attention being therefore treated as information out of the context (Wright & Ward, 2008). Future experiments could try to manipulate eye fixation on a single kind of gesture/movement in order to assess causal role and mediation of gesture eye-fixation with respect to competence and persuasiveness audience evaluations.

A literature review is presented for hand gestures, offering a critical comparison among different both theoretical and empirical contributions, mainly with reference to social psychology and psycholinguistics. First, contributions about gestures' structure and form (hand gesture typological taxonomies), then contributions about gestures' functions(mainly on the basis of gesture-verbal associations) are discussed. Finally, both theoretical and methodological guidelines are given for future research developments, in order to foster a better comprehension of the phenomenon, especially with reference to relevant social-psychological areas such as persuasive communication.

Cristina Stefanile, Annamaria Manganelli, Patrizia Catellani

Gender (in)equality is well documented in the literature. In this paper, we aim to analyse some discriminatory aspects of gender perception, including the impact of social and behavioural factors, as well as cultural and societal aspects, throught a broad critical review of recent literature. Furthermore we synthetically present two studies that demonstrate the presence of the discriminatory effect called “Woman-are-Wonderful” (WAW, Eagly e Mladinic, 1994). This phenomenon, which suggests that women are evaluated more positively than men, is a kind of benevolent paternalistic sexism and reflects the bias that women are associated with nurturing characteristics. In our first study we asked participants to evaluate a set of pictures with smiling and non-smiling women and men. The results shown that smiling women are perceived as more competent and have a higher probability to be hired than smiling men, whereas non-smiling women are judged less sociable and moral, and have a lower probability to be hired than men. In the second study, conducted in 44 countries, we found that the WAW effect is stronger in less egalitarian cultures. In more egalitarian cultures, even if women are less discriminated in comparison with other societies, men are judged better than in societies with higher levels of gender inequality. We close with a discussion of the social and cultural implications of our findings.

La presenza di alunni con background migratorio nella scuola italiana rende rilevante lo studio del pregiudizio nei bambini. Già nei primi anni di vita i bambini categorizzano le persone in base alle caratteristiche etniche e assumono atteggiamenti di discriminazione sociale, influenzati anche dai processi di socializzazione con adulti e pari. La scuola è un contesto ottimale per ridurre il pregiudizio etnico. In letteratura il contatto (diretto o immaginato) intergruppi e l’empatia si dimostrano tra le strategie più efficaci di riduzione del pregiudizio. Il percorso educativo ha l’obiettivo di promuovere pratiche antidiscriminatorie e ridurre il pregiudizio, favorendo la riflessione sui fenomeni migratori. Sono utilizzati disegni prodotti da persone migranti e raccolti dall’artista McCormack nel progetto Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow. Il percorso è realizzato in classi quinte di scuola primaria, utilizzando il linguaggio visivo per promuovere il perspective taking con disegni di migranti della stessa età dei destinatari: in questo modo si crea un contrasto tra la loro esperienza e quella dei migranti e si produce un apprendimento anche emotivo del vissuto della migrazione. Si struttura come percorso interdisciplinare di 8 incontri in cui si prevede la partecipazione attiva degli alunni, attivando l’empatia. Pre e post intervento sono somministrati strumenti per rilevare il pregiudizio implicito ed esplicito. The presence of pupils with a migratory background in the Italian school increases the relevance of a study regarding children prejudice. Since the early years of life, children show social discrimination classifying people according their ethnicity, influenced by adult and peer socialization processes. School results to be an optimal context to contrast the development of ethnic prejudice. The intergroup contact theory has been demonstrated to be effective in the reduction of prejudice; and educational strategies that promote real or imaginary contact results are successful. The educational path aims to promote deconstruction of prejudice and reduction of discrimination practices, raising awareness to migration. It uses the migrants’ drawings collected by the artist Bryan McCormack for the project Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow. It is realized a path for pupils in schools using the YTT visual language to produce perspective taking and an imaginary contact with a migrant/refugee of the same age: in this way it is possible to create a contrasting effect between their own experiences and migrants’/refugees’ experiences and to stimulate an emotional understanding of the migration experience. The path is structured as interdisciplinary, composed by 8 lessons. It uses student-centered strategies, which activate empathy. Before and after the intervention questionnaires to measure implicit and explicit prejudice are administered.

Cosa ci rende felici? L’importanza di aspetti culturali, sociali e psicologici per il benessere delle persone. Confronti cross-culturali nazionali e internazionali