FOSTERING FLEXIBLE THINKING SKILLS AND SELF-EFFICACY IN SEARCHING FOR A JOB: AN INTERVENTION ADDRESSED TO UNEMPLOYED ADULTS

The intervention was addressed to those people who have become the protagonists of a growing social phenomenon: discouragement. Discouraged persons have lost their job and their confidence in their own abilities to deal with a new work environment constantly changing. The annual report of the Italian national central institute of statistics stressed that in recent years the phenomenon reached peaks ever recorded: there are about 3 million discouraged persons in Italy and more than 8 million in Europe. This picture is alarming because in a crisis like the one that is going through the European economy, the failure to find work could weigh further on the economic and psycho-social of the countries. The intervention aimed at motivating people actively seeking a new work. Some focus groups were conducted in the exploratory phase with discouraged persons to investigate what are the possible motivations to give up the search for work. Two obstacles emerged as the principal ones: the loss of the feeling of self-efficacy (the belief that they have the resources to cope with a critical situation) and distrust of the world of atypical work. On the basis of what emerged in the focus groups a training was devised with the goals to enhance the perceived self-efficacy while searching for a new job, to stimulate flexible thinking and to improve the market perception of atypical work. The training, which was attended by 28 people, was divided into two formative moment (four activities for each). Tests were administered to 28 participants and 28 subjects in the control group. Tests measured: general self-efficacy perceived, self-efficacy in job search, perception of the labor market and flexible thinking (tripartite: creativity, cognitive flexibility and skills transfer). The training achieved the expected outcomes. Who took part to the training resulted to be more flexible than the control adults, positively changed their perception of the work market and obtained higher scores on the scale of perceived self-efficacy in finding a job.