'She is failing; he is learning': Gender-differentiated attributions for girls' and boys' errors.

BACKGROUND: According to gender-differentiated attributions of failure in the STEM field, errors tend to be attributed to internal factors more to girls than to boys. AIMS: This experimental study explored factors influencing gender-differentiated teachers' internal attributions of girls' and boys' errors and the consequent likelihood of teachers' hesitancy to offer educational robotics (ER) courses to them. The predictions were as follows: (1) the likelihood of teachers' hesitancy would be related to gender-differentiated internal attributions of errors based on expectations of a low natural aptitude for girls; and (2) teachers with high levels of gender stereotypes would be more hesitant about offering ER to girls than to boys via the mediation of internal attributions of errors as being due to girls' low levels of natural aptitude for ER. SAMPLE AND METHODS: In this experimental study, 155 Italian teachers (M = 38.59 years, SD = 8.20) responded to a questionnaire at the end of a course on ER in 2022. Teachers randomly read one of two vignettes describing a girl's or a boy's error during an ER course. RESULTS: Results of multiple regression and moderated mediation analyses confirmed both predictions. CONCLUSIONS: In order to reduce the gender STEM gap, the tendency to attribute girls' errors to internal and natural causes should be better inspected.

The Role of Sexual Prejudice and Aetiology Beliefs in the Italians' Attitudes Toward Adoption by Same-Sex Couples.

Research found that those who believe sexual orientation is inborn have generally positive attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women. However, other studies have also found that these beliefs could include negative eugenic ideas. This study aims to investigate the role of people's beliefs about the aetiology of sexual orientation in attitudes toward adoption for both gay and lesbian couples in Italy. We hypothesized that this relationship would be mediated by sexual prejudice. To test the predictions, 256 Italian heterosexual participants were asked to answer questions on a scale about their beliefs regarding the aetiology of sexual orientation, sexual prejudice, and attitudes toward adoption by same-sex couples. Results confirmed that the relationship between aetiology beliefs and support for adoption by gay and lesbian couples was fully mediated by sexual prejudice. These results suggest that the belief that sexual orientation is controllable may serve to justify one's prejudice and, in turn, result in a lower support for same-sex couples' adoption.

Educational Robotics for children with neurodevelopmental disorders: A systematic review.

This paper aims to provide a critical review of the studies dealing with Educational Robotics for children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders. We aimed to investigate whether in the literature there is a sound evidence that activities with robots improve the abilities and performances of children with special needs. This paper explores the methodological aspects as well as the outcomes of the selected studies to provide a clear picture of the state-of-the-art on this topic. After a systematic search in the online database via keyword searches, 15 scientific papers were included in this review. We applied strict selection criteria limiting our review only to papers reporting educational robotics activities with children (from 3 up to 19 years old) with a diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders, in which the children had the opportunity to somehow program the behaviours of real robots. The majority of experiences showed improvements in the participants' performance or abilities, their engagement and involvement, communication/interaction with peers, during robotics sessions. Some studies reported mixed results, calling for the need to carefully design the objective and the related activities of each experience.

Competence and Benevolence as Dimensions of Trust: Lecturers' Trustworthiness in the Words of Italian Students.

Trustworthiness includes at least two dimensions: one dimension captures the authority's benevolence; the other captures authority's competence. This qualitative study explores the representation of the two dimensions of authority trustworthiness: competence and benevolence. We collected free-associations about what lecturers' competence and benevolence actually mean for Italian psychology students (n = 125). The data corpus was content-analyzed. Text units were categorized according to meaning using both a bottom-up strategy, with some categories stemming from the data (inductive reasoning), and a top-down strategy, with some categories following from the analysis of the relevant literature (deductive reasoning). Qualitative content analysis showed that these two dimensions overlapped. Students listed theoretically-defined competence characteristics as indications of both benevolence and competence. The same applied to benevolence. Overall, associations were grouped into two main dimensions: (1) the "can-do" dimension, describing a lecturer's competence and social skill; (2) the "will-do" dimension, describing a lecturer's good intentions, integrity, and personal motivation. In conclusion, the two conceptually distinct dimensions of trust are indistinguishable in the students' words. These preliminary results are in line with scholars debating the multifactorial or mono-factorial nature of trust.

Omission and Compromise: The Sacredness of Moral Foundations in Political Groups in Italy.

Sacred values are moral foundations that may make public and political debates among groups hard to resolve. A taboo trade-off framework offers the opportunity of measuring the inviolability and the "sacralization" of moral foundations. In this study, moral foundations in a taboo trade-off framework were assessed in a convenience sample of Italians (N = 224) using a new measure to assess sacred values, the Omission as a Compromise on Moral Foundations scale (OC-MF). The OC-MF measures the willingness of individuals to omit moral foundations in exchange for money. It was predicted that Italian center and left-wing participants would be less willing to compromise individualizing moral foundations as opposed to binding ones, and that center and right-wing participants would be less willing to compromise on binding moral foundations than left-wing participants. Confirmatory Factor Analyses demonstrated the two-factor structure of the OC-MF: individualizing and binding. As predicted, Repeated Measures Anova showed that political orientation was related with differential adoptions of moral foundations as sacred values, with center and left-wing participants refusing to compromise more on individualizing than on binding moral foundations. Moreover, left-wing participants were more willing to compromise on binding moral foundations than center and right-wing participants. The OC-MF shows the hypothesized differences between Italian political groups and offers a new understanding of moral reasoning. These findings provide opportunities for improving ideological debates concerning sacred values.