Ricerc@Sapienza

The context in which people consume health information has changed with the diffusion of the mobile media. The interactive health communication influences the health care system with its information dissemination, health promotion and support for health services. The object of this study is to analyze the relationships between mobile media and the credibility of health sources.The health sources include health professionals, mass media, and family/friends. Mobile media have been conceptualized at two levels.

The present work aims to analyse the current perception that European citizens have of Western democracies due to an extensive empirical study. The comprehension of the way people perceive and consider their democratic institutions is a key issue in the sociological and socio-political perspectives. Having a clear understanding of this macro-issue is a fundamental stage to approach the final goal of improving social and political stability.

Understanding the dynamics of trustworthiness in ideological contexts could influence human societies, affect electoral campaigns and ultimately impact democracy. We tested trust behaviour towards political leaders in a sample of 121 opposing/supporting voters assigned as trustors in an iterative trust game (TG). In two experiments, a famous Italian conservative leader (i.e. Silvio Berlusconi) or a famous non-politician were used as trustees in a predefined un/trustworthy TG, while trustors believed that mathematical algorithms reproduced trustee’s real behaviour.

Recent studies show that sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity can be heavily impacted not only by basic threats to survival, but by threats to social bonds. Herein we explored the behavioral and physiological consequences of social exclusion/inclusion in patients with psoriasis, a disease frequently associated with the experience of being ostracized and deficient emotion regulation skills. We employed a virtual ball-tossing game (Cyberball) to induce the experience of social exclusion/inclusion. We then used a Trust game to measure the effects of this social modulation on trust.

We model how the interplay between tax surveillance institutions and civic capital shapes taxpayers’ support for the welfare state. We show that, when tax surveillance is tight, rational civic-minded individuals express greater support for welfare spending than uncivic ones. We provide empirical evidence of these preferences using data from Italy, a country that has long posed a puzzle for public economists for its limited civic capital and large welfare state

We study how the diffusion of broadband Internet affects social capital using two data
sets from the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that broadband access has long
depended on customers’ position in the voice telecommunication infrastructure that was
designed in the 1930s. The actual speed of an Internet connection, in fact, rapidly decays
with the distance of the dwelling from the specific node of the network serving its area.
Merging unique information about the topology of the voice network with geocoded

We use Italian data from the Multipurpose Household Survey to explore how participation in social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter affects the most economically relevant aspect of social capital, trust. We account for measures of trust in strangers (often referred to as social trust), trust in neighbours (particularized trust) and trust in the police (institutional trust).

Social media have been credited with the potential of reinvigorating trust by offering new opportunities for social and political participation. This view has been recently challenged by the rising phenomenon of online incivility, which has made the environment of social networking sites hostile to many users. We conduct a novel experiment in a Facebook setting to study how the effect of social media on trust varies depending on the civility or incivility of online interaction.

There is no doubt that physical activity improves health conditions; however, does it also affect the way people interact? Beyond the obvious effects related to team games, we wonder whether physical activity has in itself some effect on social behavior. Our research focuses on the potential effects of physical activity on trust and trustworthiness. Specifically, we compare the choices of subjects playing an investment game who were previously exposed to short-time physical activity to others who are not exposed to it, but involved in different simple tasks.

Il saggio muove da una indagine storica sul senso della fiducia nella attività negoziale dei privati che provare a fare luce sulla sua evoluzione. La presenza del principio di affidamento permette di percepire che il trust, in un determinato sistema giuridico, è socialmente, prima che giuridicamente, in rispetto dei propri valori e princípî, considerato un meccanismo fondato sull’affidamento dei beni al trustee e necessariamente sull’affidamento nel trustee.