Advanced search
Recent Additions
- 2026-02-19
Scare quotes as scare tactics: The use of quotation in ultraconservative Polish discourse
The paper examines the role of quotation in shaping social attitudes and reinforcing norms and values within the discourse on issues such as abortion, hate speech, and LGBT+ rights of the Polish ultraconservative organization Centrum Życia i Rodziny. The aim of the paper is to classify and analyze the use of different varieties of quotation, with a particular focus on the distancing and expressive functions of scare quotation. It also examines instances of non-standard uses of name-informing, direct, and mixed quotation, and how these can be transformed into scare quotes and employed as a rhetorical strategy to support or delegitimize ideological stances and elicit action or emotional responses from the reader. Through corpus-based qualitative analysis, the paper attempts to identify the possible goals and motivations behind the use of quotation – especially scare quotes – and illustrate its strategic use in discourse. - 2026-01-16
Need for cognitive closure predicts preference for similar others and reduced diversity in social networks
People vary in their tolerance for uncertainty, and this motivation—known as Need for Cognitive Closure (NFC)—can shape social behavior. Individuals high in NFC are driven to avoid ambiguity and quickly resolve uncertainty. Because interacting with similar others (homophily) tends to reduce uncertainty, while engaging with dissimilar others (heterophily) can increase it, we examined whether NFC predicts preferences for homophilous over heterophilous interactions. Across four correlational studies and a preregistered experiment, we found that higher NFC was consistently associated with lower heterophily. Meta-analytic results confirmed the robustness of this association across samples. High-NFC individuals also reported fewer acquaintances and fewer people to discuss important matters with. To investigate whether uncertainty reduction motivates these patterns, we experimentally induced uncertainty and assessed participants’ social preferences. As predicted, uncertainty reduced interest in interacting with dissimilar others, especially among individuals high in NFC. These findings suggest that a fundamental motivation to reduce uncertainty influences the diversity and composition of people’s social networks. This has broader implications for social support, the construction of shared realities, and the persistence of group-based stereotypes. - 2026-03-04Yeditepe University Press
From Theory of Design to Theory for Design
This paper proposes a theory for design as an alternative to constructing a universal theory of design. Design is presented not as an abstract construct but as a pragmatic process of problem-solving, transforming existing situations into preferred ones through communicative offers—artefacts, systems, and practices that orient humans within their social and environmental contexts. Grounded in constructivist epistemology (Maturana, Varela, von Foerster, von Glasersfeld), the argument treats cognition as an individual, non-transferable process of meaning-making, while communication provides the mechanism linking these cognitive worlds. Following Luhmann and Fleischer, communication is seen as self-reproducing, generating society as a system of repeated and connectable interactions. Design thus appears as a communicative practice: stimulating cognition, offering products for meaning negotiation, and shaping social reproduction. Examples such as the redesign of signage in transport hubs show that design extends beyond artefacts, initiating processes of adaptation, critique, and meaning reproduction. Every design is ultimately a design of communication, raising strategic questions of what, how, to whom, and when to communicate. The paper argues that “effective communication” is an operative fiction: useful for practice yet impossible to guarantee. Accordingly, design cannot directly steer social change but creates conditions for awareness and collective negotiation of meanings. A theory for design provides a neutral, knowledge-based framework for intentional, communication-oriented practices, placing the human being and their environment at the center. Codebook to a qualitative study on barriers and facilitators to participation in a dyadic internet intervention to manage work-family conflict
Codebook to a qualitative study on barriers and facilitators to participation in a dyadic internet intervention to manage work-family conflict as reported in: Smoktunowicz E, Maciejewski J, Lesnierowska M, Ziolkowska J, Roczniewska M. Doing it together: Qualitative study on barriers and facilitators to dyadic internet interventions for interrole conflict. Internet Interv. 2025 Oct 3;42:100880. doi: 10.1016/j.invent.2025.100880. PMID: 41113765; PMCID: PMC12529352.
Most viewed
- 2024-05-24
Psychologia społeczna. Wydanie drugie zaktualizowane
Nowa wersja podręcznika Psychologia społeczna ukazuje się w 14 lat po jego pierwszej edycji. Później było wiele wydań, bo podręcznik zyskał powszechne uznanie wykładowców i studentów. To wydanie jednak zasadniczo różni się od poprzednich. Współautorem został Tomasz Grzyb. W tomie przybyło wiele nowych fragmentów, niektóre kwestie zaktualizowano bądź opatrzono dodatkowymi komentarzami, odwołując się do świeżej literatury. Przede wszystkim zmienił się świat dookoła nas, pojawiły się nowe zjawiska, jak na przykład światowa pandemia COVID-19 i wraz z tym potrzeba odniesienia się do jej psychologicznych konsekwencji, a o wielu zjawiskach, którymi zajmuje się psychologia społeczna wiemy dziś więcej niż kilkanaście lat temu. Nie pozostało to bez wpływu na sam podręcznik – jego nowa, zmodyfikowana i przeredagowana treść lepiej oddaje charakter zmieniającej się, choć ciągle tak samo fascynującej dziedziny, jaką jest psychologia społeczna. Profesorowie Bogdan Wojciszke i Tomasz Grzyb, psychologowie o światowej renomie, napisali podręcznik do psychologii społecznej, jakiego jeszcze w Polsce nie było. Książka obejmuje wszystkie klasyczne zagadnienia składające się na tę dyscyplinę oraz zagadnienia relatywnie nowe, takie jak kwestie różnic płci, nowych mediów, społeczeństwa sieci, miłości i władzy. Napisana jasnym i barwnym językiem skupia się na prawidłowościach rządzących ludzką psychiką i postępowaniem. Pokazuje, w jak fascynujący sposób psychologia społeczna odpowiada na pytanie, kim jest człowiek i na czym polega jego społeczna natura. Wcześniejsze wydania tej książki stały się fundamentem dydaktyki akademickiej na kierunku psychologia. - 2025-08-11
What Puppygirls Know? The (in)Human Pedagogy of a Trans Feminine Style
‘Puppygirls’ is a name for a particular kinky trans feminine lesbian style, rooted in the long history of trans erotic productions, and currently thriving on social media platforms, such as Twitter (now X), Bluesky, or Discord. In this article, I provide an analysis of the style that is rooted in personal immersion in ‘puppygirl culture’. Using several examples of puppygirl media productions, I argue for the possibility of reading the puppygirl style as a critical practice: one that hints at ways of being trans that do rely on the ciscentric understanding of ‘the human’ as their point of reference. In doing so, I show how puppygirl style resonates with theoretical interventions in the field of trans studies offered by scholars such as Susan Stryker and Talia Mae Bettcher. - 2024-06
The Big Three Perfectionism Scale: Validation of the Polish Version
The Big Three Perfectionism Scale (BTPS) was created to integrate different aspects of perfectionism, including the newly conceptualized concept of narcissistic perfectionism. The goal of our two studies (N = 1341) was to examine the psychometric properties of the Polish adaptation of the BTPS, supporting the validity and portability of the measure. The studies were conducted among people who had a child, thus contributing to a better understanding of parental perfectionism, one of the key factors influencing parental well-being and a child’s functioning. Our analyses included investigating the structure of the scale, intercorrelations between subscales, reliability, and convergent validity by correlating BTPS scores with other measures of perfectionism and correlates of psychopathology (borderline symptoms) and parental difficulties (parental stress and parental burnout). Results supported the structure of the original BTPS. As predicted, confirmatory factor analysis indicated that items comprising the Polish adaptation of the questionnaire, like the original version, measure three related but specific aspects of perfectionism: rigid perfectionism, self-critical perfectionism, and narcissistic perfectionism. The three dimensions were also found to be specifically related to the difficulties experienced by parents. Further, the Polish version of the BTPS was found to have good internal reliability and validity. Our results from two independent Polish samples suggest that the Polish version of the BTPS is a psychometrically robust measure of perfectionism for assessing the three perfectionism factors. - 2023-06-09
Fantazje o byciu podawaną z rąk do rąk. Transkobiece marzenia o uprzedmiotowieniu jako mechanizm produkcji płci
This article is an attempt at the analysis of the relationship between trans feminine fantasies of extreme, sadomasochistic objectification in sexual relations, and social means of the production of gender. Using mixed methods (literary ana-lysis, autotheory, and feminist critique) it situates the problem of sadomasochism and trans femininity within the context of patriarchal gender norms, but also within the context of the desire to embody these norms as a form of a gender affirmation. Rejecting trans-exclusionary proposals, it suggests the possibility to understand the trans feminine romance with objectification as an intentional strategy for seizing the means of the production of gender. However, to understand those strategies, one must look beyond frameworks which portray agency as being founded on a com-plete exclusion of submissiveness.