Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal overshadowing” effect (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). More recent studies suggested that this effect might be substantially smaller than first reported. Given uncertainty about the effect size, the influence of this finding in the memory literature, and its practical importance for police procedures, we conducted two collections of preregistered direct replications (RRR1 and RRR2) that differed only in the order of the description task and a filler task. In RRR1, when the description task immediately followed the robbery, participants who provided a description were 4% less likely to select the robber than were those in the control condition. In RRR2, when the description was delayed by 20 min, they were 16% less likely to select the robber. These findings reveal a robust verbal overshadowing effect that is strongly influenced by the relative timing of the tasks. The discussion considers further implications of these replications for our understanding of verbal overshadowing.

The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has called for unprecedented measures, including a national lockdown in Italy. The present study aimed at identifying psychological changes (e.g., changes in depression, stress, and anxiety levels) among the Italian public during the lockdown period, in addition to factors associated with these changes. An online follow-up survey was administered to 439 participants (original sample = 2766), between 28 April and 3 May 2020. A paired sample t-test tested for differences in stress, anxiety, and depression over the period. Multivariate regression models examined associations between sociodemographic variables, personality traits, coping strategies, depression, and stress. Results showed an increase in stress and depression over the lockdown, but not anxiety. Negative affect and detachment were associated with higher levels of depression and stress. Higher levels of depression at the start of the lockdown, as well as fewer coping strategies and childlessness, were associated with increased depression at follow-up, whereas higher levels of stress at the start of the lockdown and younger age were associated with higher stress at follow-up. These results may help us to identify persons at greater risk of suffering from psychological distress as a result lockdown conditions, and inform psychological interventions targeting post-traumatic symptoms.

Internet addiction (IA) has mostly been investigated with the fear of missing out and difficulties in emotional regulation. The present study examined the link between IA and variables related to problematic social media use (i.e., fear of missing out, social media addiction), together with emotional (dys)regulation and personality traits, providing new insights and an integrated assessment of IA. In total, 397 participants, aged 18–35 years (M = 22.00; SD = 3.83), were administered a set of questionnaires pertaining to IA, problematic social media use, emotional (dys)regulation, and personality traits. Pearson’s correlations showed significant associations between IA and the investigated variables, and the tested mediation model highlighted the crucial role played by emotional (dys)regulation in the fear of missing out and problematic use of social networks. Overall, the findings provide support for a new integrated model for understanding the features, predictors, and risk factors of IA.

Gratitude may be defined as a personal positive tendency to recognize and respond with gratitude to positive experiences. It has been extensively described within personal relationship literature, showing its correlations with life satisfaction and decreased psychopathology. We propose here to consider gratitude as both a personal and an organizational value able to improve job performance and job satisfaction. The specific aim is twofold: to explore how public administration workers are used to express and perceive gratitude in the workplace, and to validate a serial mediation model, in which dispositional, collective, and relational gratitude are predictors of job satisfaction and job performance. We have designed a mix-method study, with a survey and a diary study, choosing to collect data also on a daily basis because we were interested in gratitude exchanges in work contexts using the event-sampling data method. Nine employees from several Italian public administrations completed a gratitude diary for ten working days in the initial qualitative part of the study. Afterwards, a sample of 96 Italian public administration employees filled in a questionnaire with measures related to job satisfaction, job performance, and three dimensions of gratitude: dispositional, collective, and relational. Results confirm that the three types of gratitude are predictors of job performance and job satisfaction and this relation has been tested in a serial mediation model. This investigation on gratitude has practical implications for the planning of training interventions framed in the positive psychology context.

The present study investigated emotional memory following bilateral transcranial electrical stimulation (direct current of 1 mA, for 20 minutes) over fronto-temporal cortical areas of healthy participants during the encoding of images that differed in affective arousal and valence. The main result was a significant interaction between the side of anodal stimulation and image emotional valence. Specifically, right anodal/left cathodal stimulation selectively facilitated the recall of pleasant images with respect to both unpleasant and neutral images whereas left anodal/right cathodal stimulation selectively facilitated the recall of unpleasant images with respect to both pleasant and neutral images. From a theoretical perspective, this double dissociation between the side of anodal stimulation and the advantage in the memory performance for a specific type of stimulus depending on its pleasantness supported the specific-valence hypothesis of emotional processes, which assumes a specialization of the right hemisphere in processing unpleasant stimuli and a specialization of the left hemisphere in processing pleasant stimuli. From a methodological point of view, first we found tDCS effects strictly dependent on the stimulus category, and second a pattern of results in line with an interfering and inhibitory account of anodal stimulation on memory performance. These findings need to be carefully considered in applied contexts, such as the rehabilitation of altered emotional processing or eye-witness memory, and deserve to be further investigated in order to understand their underlying mechanisms of action.