The community of Genzano di Roma is a small city locaed at about 35 Km from Rome. It represents a socioeconomic microcosm of the nation’s larger society. A large longitudinal project has been conducted by Gian Vittorio Caprara and Concetta Pastorelli since 1993 with the primary goal of investigating the personal and social determinants of children and adolescents’ adjustment

Our lab is part of the international longitudinal project Parenting Across Cultures (PI: Jennifer Lansford) involving nine countries across the world. The project aimes to examine how biological, cultural and familial processes impact child development, self-regulation and risk-taking. the project is currently in its twelve year of research. Concetta Pastorelli is the Co-PI for Italy (together with Dario Bacchini, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli).

The CEPIDEA program is a school-based program aimed mainly to promote prosocial behaviors in young adolescents. The program include (1) sensitization to prosocial values; (2) development of emotion regulation skills (management of negative emotions and expression and reinforcement of positive emotions); (3) development of empathy and perspective-taking skills; and (4) improvement of interpersonal-communication skills;(5) the precursors of civic engagement. Findings have corroborated the effectivenss of the program in promoting prosocial behavior, interpersonal capabilites, academic achievement and in reducing aggressive behavior.

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Our lab is involved (along with the University of Florence) in the evaluation of the Italian Safer Internet Centre (SIC; Generazioni Connesse). The SIC promotes safer and better use of the internet among children, parents and teachers through awareness and dissemination activities. It provides Helpline and Hotline services for providing support to youths' problems related to the use of digital and online technologies or internet safety and to collect and work on warnings of illegal, harmful internet content .