Luca Menghini receives the AIP Award for "Best Scientific Paper Published in 2023"
Dr. Menghini was awarded during the XX AIP Congress – Psychology for Organizations

During the AIP – Psychology for Organizations Congress held in Bergamo in September 4-6, 2024, Dr. Luca Menghini, researcher at the Human Technology Lab (DPG), received the "Best Scientific Paper Published in 2023" award.
The article “Uncovering the Main and Interacting Impact of Workaholism on Momentary Hedonic Tone at Work” was published in the APA Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, focusing on the affective tone of individuals with workaholism traits. Based on an innovative approach called "experience sampling method" the study monitored the mood of a sample of office workers who responded to 7 short questionnaires per day over 3 working days.
Contrary to what suggested by the previous literature, the study highlighted that workaholics exhibited a consistently lower mood, even during the activity they are most obsessed with, i.e., while being at work. Moreover, their mood appeared insensitive to the number of hours spent working and the daily fluctuations in workload, which negatively affected the mood of those participants with lower workaholism traits.
These findings were interpreted as signs of a reduced awareness of the negative effects of excessive work investment, which can lead to physical and mental health issues in the long term, as indicated by previous studies. Therefore, implementing policies and interventions to address this increasingly widespread problem in the current context of work intensification is critical. However, such actions are hindered by a greater "social acceptability" of workaholism compared to other forms of behavioral addiction, such as gambling.
Dr. Menghini's work was conducted as part of his PhD project in Psychological Sciences at DPG, in collaboration with Prof. Cristian Balducci from the University of Bologna and Prof. Paola Spagnoli from the University of Campania.