La professione dello psicologo tra competenza e calore: stategie di adattamento

This dissertation deals with the psychology profession with a focus on the interprofessional network relationships and competencies. These topics are examined in the light of important and well-established psychological theoretic frameworks and constructs: the Stereotype Content Model (SCM, Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu,2002) and the Social Identity Theory (SIT, Tajfel and Turner,1979, Tajfel,1981). The present work aims to integrate different methods. Although the Stereotype Content Model and the SIT have been developed independently, they have led to complementary results that could contribute to a better understanding of stereotypes. The context and the concept of malleability have a key role and they are a bridge between the SCM and SIT (Rijswik and Ellemers,2002; Haslam, Oakes, Turner, & McGarty,1995). The common thread of this work is the attempt to integrate and to mix different perspectives. The first study investigates how the SCM dimensions (warmth and competence) are used in the evaluation of different professional target by students (Study 1, N = 480, Study 2, N = 172). Study 3 (N = 134) focuses on the psychologist profession in the health care setting, with particular interest on self-presentation strategies of psychology students. An experimental manipulation in a hiring context is used (manipulation of competition and professional group to compare with). Quantitative (with a 8 questionnaire) and qualitative (word associations and open questions) data have been collected and analyzed. Finally, the study 4 focuses on the main topics raised in previous studies (competence, competition and interaction with other professionals) in a deeply way using interviews. This study doesn’t involve students but 18 professional psychologists with different levels of experience and with a work experience in the social and health care setting and in a team. The results show the importance of the inter-professional relationship: a confusion and an overlap with other professionals (ie. educators) and a collaboration with the social worker emerge, while there is also a complex and often conflicted relationship with the doctor. Psychologist use positive differentiation in-group strategies in the comparison with doctor. The results show also that fitting strategy and flexibility are important for the psychology profession (ie. warmth and competence could be used in a malleable and strategic way) and they have a key role in order to perform in different settings, that is typical of the profession. The results are discussed highlighting the central bond with training and development, which appear very important for professionals but in the same time seem to be distant, poorly connected and not always helping in work’s difficulties for the way they are structured in the current context.