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- 2026-06-17
Links Between Vocational, Parental, and Romantic Identity and Life Satisfaction and Depressive Symptoms in Adulthood : A Comparison of Samples From the United States, South Africa, Japan, Poland, and Israel
Sense of personal identity plays a key role in shaping life satisfaction and mental health, but our knowledge of this relationship in adulthood is still limited. There have also been no studies on whether these relationships in adulthood are culturally specific or similar across cultures. Thus, the present study aimed to understand better how identity processes in the vocational, parental, and romantic domains are related to life satisfaction and severity of depressive symptoms in adults from five culturally diverse countries: United States (N = 467), South Africa (N = 306), Japan (N = 600), Poland (N = 456) and Israel (N = 488). The analysis showed significant differences in the intensity of identity processes between countries, with Japan and Poland having the lowest level of commitment and the highest level of reconsideration of commitment across different domains, whereas the United States and South Africa showed stronger in-depth exploration and commitment. Israel occupied an intermediate position, notable for its high commitment in the parenting domain. Overall, the results showed the rather universal significance of a mature identity – identity commitment was associated with higher life satisfaction and lower depressive symptoms and reconsideration of commitment with lower life satisfaction and higher depressive symptoms in all countries. However, some country differences were also observed, suggesting that social context and cultural values may influence the importance of particular identity domains. The study highlights the importance of integrating cultural context in analyses of identity in adulthood and provides a basis for further research in this area. - 2026-11-13
The spillover effect of unrealistic optimism and its temporal aspects
Unrealistic optimism is a phenomenon in which a person perceives oneself as less threatened than another person in the same situation leading to the feeling of control and fear reduction during and before threatening events. A small amount of research on unrealistic pessimism delivers the opposite picture: people perceive themselves as more exposed to negative consequences compared to others. The consequences of these biased perceptions of reality are seminal: the first leads to an increased risk of disregarded negative consequences, whilst the second leads to proactive actions toward self-protection. The present paper tries to replicate the unrealistic pessimism effect in a new context: floods. Surprisingly, results show that people affected by floods report unrealistic optimism. Non-affected participants shared this bias, described as the ‘spillover effect.’ Finally, this illusion persists over time, even when the risk is no longer present, challenging its fear-reduction explanation. - 2024-01
Czy pomiar objawów PTSD za pomocą PTSD Checklist dla DSM-5 (PCL-5) jest równoważny kulturowo? Raport z badania przeprowadzonego w ośmiu kulturach w czasie pandemii COVID-19 20
Post-traumatic stress disorder describes a chronic and impairing response to extreme stress that affects daily functioning. One of the most wellknown and commonly used tools for measuring post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms is the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5. This tool has been adapted to many different cultures, but measurement equivalence across cultures has only been examined in a single study of European countries. The aim of these analyses was to verify full measurement equivalence of the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5. Data from eight countries (N > 200) were included: Poland, USA, Japan, Argentina, South Korea, Ireland, United Kingdom, and Kazakhstan, collected during the second, third, and fourth waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. A symptom structure model based on DSM-5 presented good fit to the data, but the best fit was found for a hybrid seven-factor model; measurement equivalence was verified with respect to the latter model. Confirmation was obtained for equivalence in terms of identical structure and factor loadings (configural and metric invariance), but not in terms of intercepts and residuals (scalar and residual invariance). Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms were positively correlated with the levels of depressive, anxiety, and stress symptoms (strongly or moderately) and with COVID-19-related stressors as well as emotional reactivity (moderately or weakly) in all samples. The results allow us to conclude that the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 measures culturally universal indicators of post-traumatic stress disorder, but measurement equivalence should be verified in each cross-cultural study to confirm scalar invariance. In future research on PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 measurement equivalence, efforts should be made to select equally sized and demographically homogeneous samples. - 2026-05
Discipline-specific AI adoption in higher education: insights for advancing quality education and sustainability (SDG 4)
Purpose: This study examines the usage patterns of artificial intelligence (AI) tools among 859 university students in Poland, representing three major academic fields. The research aims to identify discipline-specific differences in AI adoption, usage motivations, perceived benefits, and challenges, contributing to evidence-based strategies for advancing Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education). Design/methodology/approach: An exploratory quantitative approach was employed using a cross-sectional online survey conducted from February to May 2025. Data from 859 students across humanities and social sciences, natural sciences and technology, and arts and communication were analysed using descriptive statistics and nonparametric methods (KruskalWallis and DSCF post-hoc tests). Findings: Significant inter-group differences were identified in AI adoption patterns. Humanities students primarily use AI for knowledge expansion (54%) and translation (48%). Natural sciences students emphasise problem-solving (51%) and knowledge acquisition (62%). Arts students focus on translation (63%) and creative content generation (46%). Despite widespread adoption, students across all disciplines express concerns about data privacy, ethics, and employment impacts. Research limitations/implications: Convenience sampling and unequal group sizes limit generalizability. The cross-sectional design captures a single point during rapid technological change. Future longitudinal and comparative studies are recommended. Practical implications: Universities should develop discipline-specific AI integration strategies, targeted professional development for faculty, and comprehensive AI literacy curricula. Preparing graduates for the evolving business landscape requires aligning AI literacy, critical thinking, and ethical competencies with industry expectations. Social implications: The findings underscore the need for inclusive and equitable AI integration in higher education to prevent new forms of digital inequality, contributing to sustainable economic growth, digital transformation, and responsible workforce development. Originality/value: This study provides empirical evidence on discipline-specific AI adoption patterns in the underexplored Central and Eastern European context, documenting usage during the critical transition from experimental to systematic AI integration in higher education.
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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.