ARTICLE NEGATIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SENSE OF COMMUNITY: DEVELOPMENT OF A MEASURE AND THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS Terri Mannarini, Alessia Rochira, and Cosimo Tal ` o University of Salento Psychological sense of community (PSOC) has been a focus of extensive research investigation. However, despite the emphasis on the positive aspects of PSOC, scholars have paid relatively little attention on its negative aspects. The present work assumes PSOC to be a bipolar construct (Brodsky, 1996), introduces negative psychological sense of community (NPSOC) as a centrifugal force that drives individuals away from the community, and reports the development of the NPSOC scale. Community residents (N = 612) were sampled and surveyed to examine the statistical validity and the psychometric properties of the NPSOC scale. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) revealed that the second-order factor structure of NPSOC (consisting of four first-order factors) yielded the most satisfactory fit indices, with correlational analyses supporting the construct validity of NPSOC. To lay the foundation for future directions, the concept of NPSOC was further discussed in relation to its implications and to the construct of PSOC. C  2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychological sense of community (PSOC) is one of the most investigated constructs in community psychology. This construct was articulated and developed by Sarason (1974) in reference to the previously unnamed feeling that individuals experience in their lives as members of a human system. Four decades after Sarason’s (1974) work, PSOC remains a core research interest of scholars and professionals engaged in community development, well-being, and processes of social empowerment. As a construct, PSOC captures the following core aspects: first, the subjective sense of being part of an organized collectivity and the sharing of common symbols; second, the feeling that everyone’s basic needs Please address correspondence to: Terri Mannarini, Department of History, Society and Human Studies, Uni- versity of Salento, via Stampacchia 45, 73100 Lecce, Italy. E-mail: terri.mannarini@unisalento.it JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 42, No. 6, 673–688 (2014) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jcop). C  2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/jcop.21645