Background: There is a growing attention toward the construct of courage from a psychological point of view; recently, courage has been related with numerous positive individual behaviors and outcomes, such as coping strategies and subjective wellbeing, and an increasing number of studies explore the role of courage in the working and organizational environments. The present study is aimed to analyze the effect that individual courage—together with risk intelligence—and workplace social courage have on working performance; Methods: The participants are 961 Italian workers, balanced by gender; the measures used are: Courage, Subjective Risk Intelligence Scale, Workplace Social Courage Scale, and Performance Scale. Data were analyzed using Structural Equation Models; Results: The results show the effect of subjective risk intelligence and courage on working performance, both directly and through the mediation of workplace social courage; Conclusions: Suggestions for further research and practical implications are discussed.

Starting university life requires that students learn to cope with several personal, academic, and social challenges. A wide array of variables affects how students adjust to university life. This study was aimed to investigate which factors among coping styles, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and personality traits (i.e., diligence, relational availability, mental flexibility, activity, and emotional stability) best predicted the levels of university adjustment in a sample of university freshmen (N = 204, 63% women). Data were collected using self-report instruments. Multiple regressions analyses were conducted to identify the most significant predictors of adjustment to college. Our findings reported that self-efficacy, task-, and emotion-oriented coping were the most significant predictors, together with relational availability and mental flexibility. These findings might improve the growing knowledge concerning university adjustment, supporting main previous research. The observed relationships between university adjustment and the measured variables suggest intriguing considerations about the importance for schools and universities of providing interventions for students that aim to develop and strengthen the investigated personality facets, reducing withdrawal, behavioral and/or mental disengagement, and promoting academic achievement and success.

Background: In modern industrialized countries, loneliness has been declared an epidemic. The present paper aimed to replicate previous findings about the dimensionality of the UCLA Loneliness Scale-3 version (LS-3) in a sample of Italian adults using Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM). Methods: In Study 1, 1676 participants (M_age= 31.15; SD = 11.89) completed the LS-3. The three-factor ESEM model was performed to replicate the previous Italian version, and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis compared the three- and ten-item short versions. In Studies 2, 3, and 4, we administered measures of anxiety, depression, stress, internet addiction, self-esteem, and social interaction anxiety to 3513 participants (M_age= 30.81; SD = 11.77) to assess the convergent and discriminant validity of LS-3. Results: The ESEM 3-factor model was replicated using a Target rotation (X² = 847.597; df = 133; CFI = 0.942; TLI = 0.917; RMSEA = 0.062), whereas the already-known LS-3 short version raised psychometric concerns. Positive relationships with anxiety, depression, stress, internet addiction, and social interaction anxiety, as well as negative association with self-esteem were found. Conclusion: In conclusion, our findings support the use of the LS-3 in the Italian sample and discourage the administration of the current short forms. The implications for research and clinical practice have been discussed.

Emotional intelligence (EI) and social support are among the most investigated hypothesized variables that affect stress at work. The current study aims to evaluate the direct association between EI and occupational stress and its indirect relationship mediated by three sources of social support during the spread of the COVID-19. The total sample was composed of 367 individuals (53.7% males), aged from 20 to 68 (M = 37.84, SD = 10.39), who filled out an online questionnaire. A mediation analysis was performed to test the hypothesized relationships. Our findings showed that EI has a direct effect on psychological effects and an indirect effect on almost all the facets of occupational stress. The significant mediators were social support from both family and friends. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed and directions for future studies are suggested.

This study was addressed to assess nomophobia in an Italian sample (N = 456, 53.1% men, M_age = 31.8, SD = 11.1), also providing a deeper knowledge about how it is distributed across demographics, as well as identifying its best predictors. The main goal was to investigate the direct and indirect effects of difficulty in emotion regulation and social interaction anxiety on nomophobia through loneliness. Our findings indicated that loneliness explained the effect of the expressive suppression strategy (fully) and social interaction anxiety (partially) on nomophobia, whereas it was not a significant mediator when the cognitive reappraisal strategy was taken into account. Our study suggests that loneliness during the pandemic plays a crucial role in explaining the associations between the investigated predictors and the outcome variable, offering a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of this emerging construct. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and shortcomings and suggestions for future works are presented.

Using a valid and reliable scale to measure problems associated with excessive internet use is a key element of research on internet addiction (IA). The main goal of the current study was to develop a brief version of the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), the most widely used measure for assessing IA. In Study 1 (N = 463), we combined strict analytic techniques for item reduction with an evaluation of item content, and we compared several CFA and ESEM Models. In Study 2 (N = 374), we applied a Latent Variable Model (LMV) to examine the associations between our proposed short scale and some related variables. Our findings suggested a 7-item version (named IAT-7), with an ESEM structure and two domain-specific factors (F1: Interpersonal, Emotional and Obsessive Conflict; F2: Online Time Management). The IAT-7 showed excellent fit-indices [χ² = 13.373; df = 8; CFI = .994; TLI = .983; RMSEA = .030 (.000–.073); SRMR = .016; AIC = 9,276.944; BIC = 9,388.662; aBIC = 9,302.971] and an adequate level of internal consistency (alpha and omega > .752). Interpersonal, Emotional and Obsessive Conflict mainly predicted loneliness and depression, whereas Online Time Management was primarily associated with stress, followed by depression. The IAT-7 shows promising psychometric properties and could be used as a screening tool for evaluating IA. Its small number of items makes it more attractive when a large battery of assessment scales is used.