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Professor Daniele
Artistico
I
earned a Doctor of Philosophy in General Psychology (2002)
in Rome ( Italy ), University of Rome "La Sapienza," where
I began a line of research on everyday problem solving and
perceived self-efficacy. The primary scientific questions
in this line of research were: 1) whether young and older
people display high levels of cognitive performance on tasks
that are representative of challenge that occur in their day-to-day
life; and 2) whether people's subjective appraisals of their
capabilities for performance, or self-efficacy appraisals,
directly contribute to observed differences in cognitive performance
among older versus younger adults. My dissertation studies
revealed age differences among younger and older adults' abilities
to perform tasks that require sustained cognitive effort,
such as abstract reasoning and solving everyday problems.
The results of these studies indicated that, compared to older
adults, younger adults have higher self-efficacy beliefs and
performance on an abstract problem solving task and on everyday
problems that are representative of problems commonly confronted
by young adults. The reverse is true when problems are representative
of the challenges confronted by older adults; older adults'
self-efficacy beliefs and performance exceed those of young
adults.
The
focus of my research has broadened while working with Professor
Daniel Cervone as a Research Scientist in the Department of
Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
Our collaboration has enriched my understanding of social
cognitive theory and its impact on individuals' behavior.
We are advancing a project in which we are studying the coherence
of people's personality. Self-efficacy or the ability to perform
successfully given challenging behaviors is the main variable
of interest. We are concerned not only with interindividual
differences in the population, but also with individual persons.
We strive to characterize the qualities that make individuals
unique, such as the interaction between salient beliefs about
themselves and the social contexts in which such beliefs come
into play. We are able to document for each subject unique
patterns of activation between their personal beliefs (i.e.,
I am independent, I am a nice person) and the social situations
in which such beliefs are relevant (in class, with peers,
etc.). Preliminary results indicate that people are faster,
in a reaction time assessment, to say that they can perform
a challenging behavior in the situations in which their personal
attributes are relevant respect to the situations in which
their personal attributes are not relevant. People's perceived
self-efficacy is higher in the situation in which their personal
attributes will help them to perform the behavior vs. the
situations in which their personality attributes will hinder
their ability to do so.
I
am currently addressing psychological processes of potential
importance to the well being of older adults. One of the most
important of these processes is the effect of "context" on
the accomplishment of personally valued behaviors. This work
is in progress and is funded by the National Institute of
Aging (Artistico, 2003) and a grant from PSC-CUNY (Artistico,
2006).
The
first goal of this project is to explore the impact of contextual
factors on adults' belief in their capabilities for performance,
or self-efficacy beliefs, as well as relations among context,
self-efficacy beliefs, and actual performance on everyday
problem solving tasks. The anticipated results are in line
with our previous findings indicating that people perform
optimally when everyday problems are embedded in the context
that is more ecologically representative of their life experience
(i.e., a young person is supposed to generate more solutions
when the problem is to buffer a financial strain related to
college tuition payment than to questions of social security
with mounting bills to pay - the reverse should be true for
older adults). We are expanding this paradigm of research
in two novel directions. First, our preliminary study included
only younger and older adults, whereas the present study includes
adults of all ages.
The
second direction in which we are expanding this paradigm of
research coincides with the second goal of the project, that
is, to improve the assessment of everyday problem solving
ability. Research on everyday problem solving has been group-centered
rather than person-centered. This group-level focus may lead
us to underestimate the everyday problem-solving capacities
of the unique individual -- including the unique older adult
who possesses idiosyncratic domains of expertise and high
self-efficacy. Thus, I am employing idiographic procedures
to assess everyday problem solving performance on problems
that are of maximally ecological relevance to the individual.
I anticipate that all individuals, including older adults,
will display their highest levels of problem-solving performance
in idiographically-identified domains of personal relevance.
Artistico,
D., Cervone, D., & Pezzuti, L. (2003). Perceived self-efficacy
and everyday problem solving among young and older adults.
Psychology and Aging , 18 , 68-79.
Caprara,
G.V., Steca, P., Cervone, D., & Artistico, D. (2003).
The contribution of self-efficacy beliefs to dispositional
shyness: On social-cognitive systems and the development of
personality dispositions. Journal of Personality, 71 ,
947-970.
Cervone,
D., Artistico, D., Berry ,
J. (2005). Self-Efficacy and Adult Development. In C. Hoare
(Ed.) Handbook of Adult Development and Learning ,
Oxford University
Press (pp 169-196).
Cervone,
D., Orom, H., Artistico, D., Shadel, W., & Kassel
, J. Using a Knowledge-and-Appraisal
Model of Personality Architecture to Understand Consistency
and Variability in Smokers' Self-efficacy Appraisals in High-Risk
Situations (in press).
Pezzuti,
L., Artistico, D., & Cervone, D. Training in everyday
problem solving increases self-efficacy and everyday problem
solving performance among older adults (manuscript submitted
for publication).
Cervone,
Caldwell, Fiori, Artistico et al. Applying a knowledge-and-appraisal
personality architecture (KAPA) to smoking and cessation:
Assessing the content and
response
time of contextualized self-appraisals (manuscript in preparation).
Please
contact Dr. Artistico for more information about joining his
lab and current research projects.
Visit the Everyday Problem Solving Lab.
Click here for information about the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.
Daniele Artistico, Ph.D.
Daniele_Artistico@baruch.cuny.edu
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
B 8-215 Baruch College , CUNY
One Bernard Baruch Way
New York , NY 10010
tel. 646.312.3837
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