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- 2026-02-20
‘So that he would not eat me’ — Navigating the single self amid shifting cultural grounds. A qualitative study of never-married Polish women's singlehood
This study explored the experiences of never-married single women in Poland, focusing on their narratives of singlehood and its implications for their well-being and life satisfaction. Employing a phenomenologically informed reflexive thematic analysis, we analyzed semi-structured interviews with 18 women aged between 23 and 43. Five key themes were generated in the analysis: 1) Breaking from Stereotypes and Traditional Gender Roles, particularly the cultural figure of the Polish Mother; 2) Balancing Connectedness and Protecting the Self, highlighting tensions between intimacy and autonomy; 3) Perceptions of Masculinity and Men, characterized by devaluation and skepticism; 4) Analyzing the Single Self, that is, the participants' reflecting on their needs, goals, and barriers in relationships and single life, and engaging in the process of meaning-making to navigate societal pressures and construct positive identities; and 5) Living Solo — Possibilities and Challenges, emphasizing both freedom and self-development opportunities as well as occasional struggles with loneliness and the lack of intimacy. The findings revealed that single women participating in the study actively rejected deficit-oriented perspectives on singlehood, embraced autonomy and self-sufficiency, and navigated both societal pressures and evolving gender norms. This study underscored the complexity of singlehood as a psychological phenomenon deeply intertwined with cultural and gendered contexts. - 2026-02-24
Charting a new path forward - Maternal cognitive adaptation to child’s autism diagnosis in relation to their psychological functioning
Child’s autism diagnosis is a significant and often challenging event for the parents, requiring psychological adjustment and adaptation. We explored how various patterns of thinking that emerge in response to a child's diagnosis, relate to parental mental health and well-being. We developed and validated the Maternal Cognitive Adaptation to Child's Autism Diagnosis (MCACAD) scale in a sample of 443 mothers of children aged 2–18 years. We identified five distinct cognitive adaptation mechanisms: Belief in Recovery, Comparisons, Belief in Family Growth, Belief in Personal Growth, and Denial of Diagnosis. Factor analysis revealed good psychometric properties, with the five-factor structure explaining 59.63 % of total variance. Results showed that meaning-focused adaptations (Belief in Personal and Family Growth) were associated with better mental health outcomes, while Social Comparisons predicted poorer outcomes. Denial of Diagnosis was associated with increased anxiety, but also was inversely associated with time since diagnosis, suggesting it may act as a shield against initial change-related uncertainty. We have also found that Caregiver burden was the strongest predictor of psychological functioning across all measures. These findings suggest that understanding maternal cognitive adaptations may help identify parents needing additional support and inform interventions promoting adaptive coping strategies following child’s autism diagnosis. - 2026-03
Pupillary and attention dynamics in response to road hazard detection
Hazard perception is the ability to anticipate and respond to potentially dangerous traffic situations, which is an important aspect of driving competence. This paper analyses pupil size fluctuations, changes in fixation duration, and the dynamics of ambient/focal attention in a laboratory hazard-perception task to measure underlying attentional and cognitive mechanisms that occur when drivers detect hazards. In the task, licensed drivers (n = 42) watched videos of natural driving scenarios recorded through a dashboard camera while their eye movements were recorded. They were asked to subjectively detect hazards (via a key press), which were later classified as either True- or False-Positive responses. We analyzed the time before and after the decision about the presence of a traffic hazard. As predicted, the pupil size increased over time. The pupil response was stronger for True than False hazard responses. The significant difference in pupil size between True and False responses appeared shortly before the decision and persisted for at least three seconds after it. There was no statistically significant differences in fixation duration over time, but True-Positive responses were related with higher fixation duration compared to False positive decisions. The increase in fixation duration was greater for True-Positive compared to False-Positive decisions. The analysis of ambient and focal attention dynamics revealed that participants maintained focal attention before and after hazard detection. The results show the potential for monitoring oculometrics in assistive driver systems for the detection of distraction and hazard perception in real time. - 2026-02-04
Illness representation profiles and biopsychosocial well-being: A longitudinal study in haematopoietic cell transplantation recipients
Objectives: One of the modifiable determinants of biopsychosocial well-being in patients admitted for hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is the illness representation. To date, studies on illness representations have mainly been cross-sectional, treating the sample as homogeneous. We investigated distinct illness representation profiles (including illness consequences, timeline, personal control, treatment control, identity, illness concern, coherence, and emotional representation) in patients before HCT, as well as profile predictors (i.e., demographic and clinical factors) and outcomes (i.e., pre- and post-transplant biopsychosocial indicators of well-being). Design: A longitudinal study. Methods: Illness representations (B-IPQ), symptoms of depression (CES-D), anxiety (GAD), loneliness (RUCLA), psychological well-being (C-PTGI-SF), and health-related quality of life (EORTC QLQ-C30) were measured in 202 patients (57% male; mean age = 47.38 years; mean time since diagnosis = 19.05 months) after admission for HCT and two weeks after discharge (N = 119). Unconditional and conditional latent profile analyses were applied. Results: Three latent illness representation profiles were identified: positive (27%), negative (19%), and ambivalent (54%). Women were more likely to belong to the negative or ambivalent profiles. Patients with more favorable illness representations reported fewer depressive, anxiety, and loneliness symptoms, both prior to and after HCT. The positive and negative profiles differentiated well between patients with greater positive psychological well-being and poorer post-transplant overall quality of life, respectively. Conclusions: The results highlight the variation in pre-HCT illness representation and demonstrate how biopsychosocial well-being is related to different illness representation subgroups in a concurrent and short-term manner, indicating the practical implications of the study. - 2026-03-03
WEIRD psychological science - geographical patterns of knowledge production
We examined gender and geographical patterns of authorship (N = 1,273,571) across psychology journals listed in Scopus (N = 1,398) depending on their citation impact for 4 consecutive years (from 2020 to 2023). We observed gender balance and a dominance of authors from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries in the authors sample (N = 921,411). The percentage of WEIRD authors varied as a function of journals’ impact, so that more WEIRD authors published in higher impact journals, and were more probable to be in a first and last authors position. Our findings show that while more authors from underrepresented regions are contributing to psychological journals, journals with higher prestige tend to have fewer of these authors. We also argue that the apparent 50/50 gender balance observed may still reflect representation bias, that is, an inadequate number of women as authors given base rates of their professional participation in psychology. These insights are crucial for fostering a more inclusive and representative field of psychology, which can lead to more equitable research practices and better outcomes for diverse populations.
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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. - 2024-06
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.