Maria Teresa GRAFFEO
Department of Psychology, Educational Science and Human Movement, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze Edificio 15, Palermo, 90128, Italy.
e-Mail: mariateresa.graffeo@unipa.it
Education
- Bachelor Degree in “Scienze e Tecniche Psicologiche” at Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy)
- Master’s Degree in “Psicologia Clinica” at Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy)
Current Positions
PhD Student in Health Promotion and Cognitive Sciences
PhD project title and a short abstract
"Desire Thinking and its potential underlying factors in addictions and problematic behaviours"
: Within the field of addictive behaviors, Desire Thinking is defined as a craving-related metacognitive process based on imaginal and verbal elaboration of the desire-target. Not problematic per se, desire thinking become dysfunctional if it is used to regulate negative mood states. The present project aims to investigate Desire Thinking as a strong correlate of craving transversely across substance and behavioral addictions, with a particular focus on the gaming behavior. Identifying the major predisposing psychological variables could prove to be a good strategy for understanding potential individual vulnerability factors and gaining a better understanding of different trajectories of problematic behavior, containing the risk to overpathologize physiological or functional behaviors.
Two reviews of the literature and a quantitative study will be conducted to analyse how desire thinking is sustained by generic and behavior-specific underlying psychological factors in producing gaming behavior.
Supervisor: Prof.ssa Maria Di Blasi
Main research areas of interest
- Addiction
- Craving
- Digital wellbeing
- Gaming
- Psychotherapy
Researcher ID
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1035-8754