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Are psychopathic traits a shield against burnout in policing?
This study investigated how psychopathic traits relate to job satisfaction and burnout in police officers. 101 Polish officers completed self-report measures for psychopathic traits, burnout, and job satisfaction. Findings indicate strong negative correlations between all psychopathy subscales and emotional exhaustion. Depersonalization also showed weak negative correlations with affective and cognitive responsiveness, and interpersonal manipulation. Conversely, personal accomplishment had moderate positive correlations with affective responsiveness and interpersonal manipulation. All psychopathy subscales strongly and positively correlated with overall job satisfaction. Results suggest that subclinical psychopathic traits may act as a protective factor against burnout and positively influence job satisfaction in police work.- 2026-03-17
Profiling psychopathic traits among organised crime group members: a prison study
Purpose This study aims to enhance the understanding of psychopathic personality traits, as defined by the psychopathic personality traits model, within UK incarcerated individuals, including organised crime group members. This study sought to replicate and expand previous latent profile analyses (LPAs) to investigate psychopathic trait intensity, manifestations and their association with organised crime membership and violent offending. Design/methodology/approach A total of 477 male adult inmates from a UK prison, including 120 members of organised crime groups, participated. Psychopathic traits were assessed using the self-reported 28-item psychopathic personality traits scale – revised (PPTS-R). LPA identified homogeneous groups based on four PPTS-R dimensions. Multinomial logistic regression then examined the association between identified latent classes, organised crime group membership and violent offending. Findings LPA revealed a four-class solution as the best fit, showing a gradient of psychopathic trait severity: “non-psychopathy group” (38%), “low psychopathy group” (30%), “moderate psychopathy group” (21%) and “high psychopathy group” (6%). The “high psychopathy group” prevalence was consistent with US and Polish inmate findings. Multinomial logistic regression showed prisoners in the “high psychopathy group”, in comparison to “non-psychopathy group”, were 4.5 times more likely to be organised crime members. No significant association was found between psychopathy classes and violent offending. Originality/value This study demonstrated that psychopathic traits are manifested consistently across incarcerated populations. It highlights a significant association between higher psychopathic traits and organised crime group membership, suggesting these traits may facilitate involvement in complex criminal enterprises. Importantly, findings decouple psychopathy from a universal prediction of violent offending, emphasising the need for nuanced risk assessments and targeted interventions. - 2025-12-01
The impact of adolescent dating violence and abuse on victims’ mental health and social isolation: a thematic empirical evidence review
Purpose Adolescent dating violence and abuse (ADVA) can have severe and long-lasting implications for the mental health, cognitive development, and overall wellbeing of young people at a complex developmental stage. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinise current literature and consider the impact of early intimate dating abuse, exploring how factors such as the quality and influence of peer relationships can be critical foundations to young people’s vulnerability or resilience. The significance of certain childhood adversities as predictors of increased risk of future ADVA perpetration and victimisation will be considered. Design/methodology/approach In this article, the authors examine the impact of ADVA on victim-survivors focusing on mental distress, including self-harm, depression and anxiety, continuous traumatic stress, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal ideation. The authors also examine the pervasive influence of ADVA on victims’ social isolation and exclusion from networks of social support. ADVA often causes victims to be fearful, entrapped, isolated and controlled. Findings Societal normalisation of dating abuse and rape myths can exacerbate a victim’s feelings of self-blame and shame, severely impairing young people’s ability to disclose and seek external support, perpetuating feelings of helplessness. In integrating recent research, legislation and government reports, the authors demonstrate the necessity of addressing ADVA through a whole school approach, trauma-informed interventions and authentic educational programmes. Originality/value This article contributes to the growing body of literature, emphasising both the mental health impact and urgent need to change attitudes and behaviours underlying ADVA. The authors offer recommendations for policy and practice such that the needs of victims can be better met whilst perpetrators are offered support and held to account. - 2026-08-08
Naming the one to save the many: The effect of animal identifiability on children's reduced meat preference
This research examines how identifying an animal as an individual influences children's willingness to consume that animal, as well as meat derived from conspecifics and different species. Across two studies involving Polish preschoolers aged 5-6 (Study 1: N = 94; Study 2: N = 105), we examined whether presenting a chicken with a name and distinct preferences would reduce children's willingness to consume that specific animal, as well as their preference for chicken meat (poultry) and meat from a different species (pork) during a toy sandwich-building task. Study 2 further compared two forms of identification: unique exemplar identification versus similar exemplar identification (highlighting traits shared with the species). Results consistently revealed that identifying a unique exemplar had a conditional effect on willingness to consume the identified animal and its conspecifics, but did not extend to meat from other species. Animal's identifiability reduced both children's intentions to consume the identified animal (Study 1) and their actual preference for chicken slices in the sandwich-building task (Studies 1 and 2). However, these effects emerged among children who did not report a strong liking for meat. Overall, the findings suggest that although animal identifiability can reduce children's intentions to consume meat, its impact is moderated by preexisting food preferences and shows limited generalization across species. - 2026-02-24
From Insecurity to Exchange: Attachment Anxiety and Avoidance Predict Exchange Orientation via Different Psychological Mechanisms.
Across three studies (N = 2,309), we examined the relationship between attachment insecurity and aspects of exchange orientation. Study 1 showed that attachment anxiety was related to exchange orientation toward romantic partners and acquaintances, and calculative mindset, whereas attachment avoidance was related to exchange orientation toward romantic partners and a calculative mindset. Preregistered Study 2 replicated these links longitudinally. Preregistered Study 3 revealed distinct mechanisms: need for cognitive closure mediated the link between anxiety and exchange orientation, while desire for control mediated the link between avoidance and exchange orientation. Together, we show that exchange orientation functions as a compensatory mechanism, providing predictability and alleviating uncertainty for individuals with high attachment anxiety and preserving autonomy for individuals with high attachment avoidance.
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- 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. - 2024-01-22
Cross-Cultural Preferences for Women’s Waist to Hip Ratio and Men’s Shoulder to Hip Ratio: Data From Iran, Norway, Poland, and Russia
Objectives: Body size and shape are sexually dimorphic in humans, with men being characterized with larger upper bodies, while women typically having broader pelvises. Such sexually dimorphic traits, quantified as shoulder to hip ratio (SHR) in men and waist to hip ratio (WHR) in women, serve as cues of an individual’s genetic fitness, reproductive potential, health, and resource holding power, and, thereby, functioning as attractiveness cues to the opposite sex. Methods: In the current study, we investigated men’s and women’s preference for the opposite sex body shape (WHR in women and SHR in men) in samples from Iran, Norway, Poland, and Russia. Women rated their preference for men’s SHR (1.20 to 1.50) and men rated their preference for women’s WHR (0.55 − 0.85). Results and Conclusion: Our results showed that Iranian and Norwegian men preferred less feminine WHRs in women compared to Polish and Russian men. Moreover, Iranian women preferred less masculine SHRs in men than women from other countries. Altogether, the current research showed that there are variations in men’s preferences for women’s WHR and women’s preferences for men’s SHR among these countries. - 2025-04-17
"Sarmatyzm". Historia pojęcia
The aim of my dissertation was to create a synthetic narrative about the history of “Sarmatism” (understood both as a word and as an idea) and to demonstrate the most important continuities and fractures within set history. I sought answers for the following questions: what was the role of “Sarmatism” in historical discourses? How was “Sarmatism” understood and what ideas did this word describe? What are the similarities and differences between individual discourses that use “Sarmatism”? Which elements of its semantic field have been the most persistent? Who and why has talked about “Sarmatism”? To what extent is “Sarmatism” a fundamental idea of the modern notion of the Polish identity? I was chiefly inspired by two methodological approaches – the history of ideas (particularly Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte and Cambridge school’s methods) and the critical discourse analysis (CDA). T he first chapter can be viewed as a follow-up to the introduction – it is the most comprehensive part of all. I demonstrated selected discursive modes of shaping the identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s ruling class. I argue that these modes were rooted mainly in the Renaissance humanist distinction between the barbaric North and civilized South. By showcasing particular texts representing different time periods, I aimed to underline the longevity of some early modern narratives about the Poles’ and Lithuanians’ shared barbaricum, construed to delineate the civilizational borders according to then current political needs. This brief overview was crucial for the dissertation, as it illustrates how the local identity discourse functioned before the political crisis of the Commonwealth, which occurred at the time when the cultural center of Europe was being narratively relocated from the South to the West. I considered the emergence of “Sarmatism” to be a result of this relocation, because of which a part of Polish elite internalized the Western narrative about Polish culture being incongruent and backward in relation to the West. T he second chapter concerns the initial phase of functioning of the “Sarmatism” in the Polish language, which occurred roughly during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. I analyzed, among others, the king’s diaries, various articles from “Monitor” and comedies of Franciszek Bohomolec, Józef Bielawski and Franciszek Zabłocki. The political conditions that mandated the emergence of “Sarmatism” in the discourse of the king’s party were outlined, along with the relationship between the word itself and the plan of national reforms postulated by the enlightened court. I demonstrated different modes of the historical uses of “Sarmatism” – especially the ironical and the non-ironical ones – by which I proved that the word was probably not used commonly because of its considerable emotional and axiological charge. Moreover, I indicated that the initial meaning of “Sarmatism” was substantially different from the contemporary ones, as it was mainly used to describe the political and cultural reality of the 18th century, not the whole culture of the early modern Commonwealth’s nobility. T he third chapter tackles the history of “Sarmatism” in the 19th century, and the source material for the analysis consists of literary works (e.g. by Cyprian Godebski, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, and Henryk Rzewuski), excerpts from press and academic texts, and definitions from dictionaries and encyclopedias. Until recently, the 19th century was viewed (and, to an extent, rightly so) as a period when “Sarmatism” was not among the most important ideas organizing the Polish national thought. However – perhaps due to the relatively low frequency of its use – this was also precisely the moment when the word gained a myriad of new meanings, among them the first positive ones. I showed how the term, intentionally rejected by the generation of the Kościuszko Uprising, gradually reappeared in language in a variety of discourses, especially in Polish historiography. The chapter ends with a subsection devoted to the analysis of “Sarmatism” as a lexeme, which illustrates the changes of its meaning as they occurred between the formulation of Samuel Bogumił Linde’s definition at the beginning of the century and the brief encyclopedic description produced by Zygmunt Gloger about a hundred years later. T he fourth chapter is an analysis of texts from the interwar period. I researched predominantly the political and academic discourses, in which “Sarmatism” was starting to play an increasingly more important role. It was then that the term was established as a label commonly applied in the humanities to describe major historical processes; that said, it was used chiefly by scholars of the history of literature (in this context I concentrated on the works of Ignacy Chrzanowski and Aleksander Brückner). At the time, “Sarmatism” was still not well-defined, while it maintained a strong and predominantly pejorative axiological charge. As I concluded, this valuation resulted from the widespread need to accentuate the interwar Poland’s modernity, expressed in the press of the era. “Sarmatism” began to epitomize “Polishness” as a feature that distinguished Poland negatively from other European nations (in the view of both liberals, like Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, and conservatives, like Roman Rybarski). Sometimes, however, it referred to genuine local culture, perceived as a quality that had to be defended from foreign elements (labeled, for example, as “Semitism” or “Germanism”). T he fifth chapter focuses on the period between the end of the WW2 and the end of the 20th century. I decided to limit the analyzed material to academic texts debating the definition of “Sarmatism”, because this is the context in which the most crucial semantic changes influencing the contemporary understanding of this term took place. My aim was to demonstrate how this process was affected on one hand by the political conditions (Stalinism, the “nationalization” of history during Gomułka’s regime, and the fall of communism) and on the other by various philosophical notions (Marxism, structuralism, and poststructuralism). The chronological organization of the 20th century’s thought on “Sarmatism” also allowed me to underline the most important interconnections between consecutive academic definitions. It also allowed me to indicate which of those approaches should be considered the most influential. T he conclusion is a short overview of contemporary political and academic takes on “Sarmatism”. I do not, however, offer any prognoses or meticulous analyses, while only indicating how today’s discourses about “Sarmatism” continue the traditional ways of understanding it.
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