PERUGINI MARCO

My research interests span the fields of personality and social psychology, with a keen eye on methodological and psychometric issues. They are part of a broader interest in attitudes, personality traits, individual differences, social cognition, and in the factors that underlie evaluation and motivation and influence behaviour.

A main longstanding research interest is in developing, applying, and testing models of decision making within the tradition of attitude theory and social cognition, with a recent focus on the measurement and the interplay between implicit and explicit attitudes and on the moderators of their predictive validity. A related research interest is on behavioural change as generated by using social psychological intervention frameworks (e.g., goals, social norms).

I have pursued a line of research also on evaluative learning paradigms as a means to change implicit and explicit attitudes, with behavioural implications. In particular, one such paradigms (Self-Referencing task) proved successful in several studies to change implicit and explicit attitudes towards a range of targets, including consumer brands and goods and social groups, and led to the documentation of a new learning principle (intersecting regularities).

In personality, a longstanding research interest is on general taxonomies of broad personality dimensions (so-called Big Five and Big Six) and on the development and application of measures broadly linked to prosocial and moral behaviour. Recent interests focus on the role of individual differences in automatic behaviour, as reflected by the Gatekeeper model proposed some years ago which can be understood as an instance of a broader dynamic situation-person interaction perspective, and on the interplay between processes and structure within personality. This last research interest has recently lead to the use of network analysis as a statistical and theoretical tool to model the dynamics and change of personality structure. Finally, I am occasionally involved in studies and validation of specific measures of personality dimensions.
My background in applied Psychometrics and quantitative research methodology is the cornerstone supporting all theoretical interests. Most statistical methods are applied and refined depending on the specific needs. I have expertise in factor analysis and structural equation models, but I am confident with several other statistical methods. I have also focused the attention to the psychometric challenges linked to the development and validation of implicit measures of attitudes and personality. Finally, I have been involved in a number of recent contributions related to the reproducibility of scientific findings.

Besides these lines of research, given my broad and eclectic scientific interests, I am involved in a number of other research projects and international collaborations on a range of topics and domains.