Centre for Social Cognitive Studies

29/12/2025

A new paper by our lab members in Journal of Social and Political Psychology!

Drawing on goal systems theory (Kruglanski et al., 2002), this preregistered study explored the relationships between political and non-political goals among individuals with varying levels of political engagement. The authors conducted 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with activists, non-activists, and former activists from Poland and Norway. They identify three recurrent relationships between political and other life goals, such as work, relationships, health, and basic psychological needs: (1) suppression, where non-political goals eclipse activism or vice-versa; (2) conflict, experienced as chronic trade-offs that often precipitate burnout; and (3) facilitation, whereby non-political goals enable sustained engagement. These relationships manifest as four distinct goal structures. Activists typically displayed either a “juggling” structure that continuously balances multiple commitments, or a “political-dominant” structure in which the cause overrides alternative goals. Non-activists most often subordinated political aims, whereas former activists described a fluctuating “all-or-nothing” structure—initial single-minded commitment followed by strategic withdrawal when costs outweighed perceived impact. Cross-nationally, Polish participants reported more multi-issue activism and acute work–activism conflicts than Norwegians, potentially reflecting longer working hours and political dissatisfaction. These findings corroborate goal systems theory by showing how dynamic configurations of goal relations underpin trajectories of engagement, disengagement and re-engagement.

Congratulations!

Link to the article: https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/view/15491

05/12/2025

Dr Gabriela Czarnek’s, a researcher at the Institute of Psychology and a member of our Centre, article has just been published in Nature – one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world!

In the paper “Persuading Voters using Human-AI Dialogues”, an international research team – including Dr Czarnek – shows that even a short conversation with an AI chatbot can shift voters’ preferences, and does so more effectively than traditional political advertising.

The study included approximately six thousand participants from the United States, Canada, and Poland. In its messages, the AI referred to factual information and relied less frequently on other persuasion techniques. However, not all of the information provided by the AI was accurate. In every country studied, AI models advocating for right-wing candidates more often presented false claims than models promoting centrist candidates.

The article is an important contribution to the discussion about the impact of AI on elections and the consequences this may have for democracy.

Link and citation
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09771-9

Lin, H., Czarnek, G., Lewis, B., White, J, P., Berinsky, A, J., Costello, A., Pennycook, G., Rand, G, D. (2025). Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09771-9

Congratulations!

Artykuł dr Gabrieli Czarnek, badaczki z Instytutu Psychologii UJ, właśnie ukazał się w Nature – jednym z najbardziej prestiżowych czasopism naukowych na świecie!

W publikacji „Persuading Voters using Human-AI Dialogues” międzynarodowy zespół – z udziałem dr Czarnek – pokazuje, że nawet krótka rozmowa z chatbotem AI może zmieniać preferencje wyborców, i robi to skuteczniej niż tradycyjne reklamy polityczne.

Badanie objęło około sześć tysięcy osób z USA, Kanady i Polski. AI w swoich komunikatach w odwoływało się do faktów, a stosunkowo rzadziej korzystało z innych technik perswazji. Jednak nie wszystkie przedstawiane przez AI informacje były zgodne z prawdą. W każdym z badanych krajów modele AI opowiadające się za kandydatami prawicowymi częściej przedstawiały nieprawdziwe twierdzenia, niż modele promujące kandydatów centrowych.

Artykuł stanowi ważny głos w dyskusji o wpływie AI na wybory oraz o konsekwencjach, jakie może to nieść dla demokracji.

Link do publikacji:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09771-9

Lin, H., Czarnek, G., Lewis, B., White, J, P., Berinsky, A, J., Costello, A., Pennycook, G., Rand, G, D. (2025). Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09771-9

[EN]
Dr Gabriela Czarnek’s, a researcher at the Institute of Psychology, article has just been published in Nature – one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world!

In the paper “Persuading Voters using Human-AI Dialogues”, an international research team – including Dr Czarnek – shows that even a short conversation with an AI chatbot can shift voters’ preferences, and does so more effectively than traditional political advertising.

The study involved six thousands participants in the US, Canada, and Poland. AI models were providing personalised, polite and fact-based dialogues. However, not all of the information provided by the AI was accurate. In all three countries, AI models advocating for right-leaning candidates more often presented false claims than models promoting centrist candidates.

This article is a contribution to the discussion about the impact of AI on elections and the consequences it may have for democracy.

Link to publication:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09771-9

Lin, H., Czarnek, G., Lewis, B., White, J, P., Berinsky, A, J., Costello, A., Pennycook, G., Rand, G, D. (2025). Persuading voters using human–artificial intelligence dialogues. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09771-9

Centre for Social Cognitive Studies | Behaviour in Crisis Lab | Instytut Psychologii UJ | Wydział Filozoficzny Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego | Uniwersytet Jagielloński

18/11/2025

A new paper in International Journal of Social Psychology coauthored by our lab members!

The authors tested motivations and conditions of helping intention towards refugees from Ukraine in three Central European countries. The aim was twofold: to test how personal, moral and politicized motivation predicted sustainability of helping, and how these motivations were connected to conditionality of helping, specifically to stereotypical expectations of refugees to fit the image of the helpless but grateful help recipients. They anticipated that helpers with politicized motivation have lower stereotypical expectations of refugees than those with personal motivation, while lower personal motivation predicts higher long-term engagement, mediated by fewer stereotypical expectations. Our online survey in Hungary (n = 2,261), Slovakia (n = 712) and Poland (n = 402) targeted people who were active in helping Ukrainian refugees. Politicized motivation predicted lower stereotypical expectations in Hungary but not in the Slovakia and Poland. Personal motivation predicted higher stereotypical expectations, which in turn predicted lower long-term prosocial action in all contexts. Authors argue that helpers who apply a double standard in helping to a lesser extent (by lower stereotypical expectations of refugees) would sustain their engagement more.

The article is available here – check it out! https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02134748251376978

21/09/2025

A new paper in Current Opinion in Psychology by our lab members!

People sometimes avoid information on purpose, a behavior known as willful ignorance. Most explanations focus on specific motives, but this research suggests a broader perspective: avoiding information can be understood as part of how people form beliefs. Two main needs drive this behavior: the desire for specific certainty (wanting a clear answer that supports what we already think) and the desire for non-specific certainty (wanting to reduce overall doubt). Depending on the situation, these needs can lead people to ignore or block information. Authors argue that this approach offers conceptual clarity by embedding information avoidance within belief formation processes and provides a unified framework that generates novel insights and testable hypotheses.

Congratulations!

Link to the article: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1leko,rU%7EO3hWs

20/09/2025

Results from the research by Katarzyna Jaśko and colleagues, showing that left-wing extremists are less violent than right-wing radicals, are currently being cited, among others, in the New York Times!

The original article can be read here:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122593119

Links to the NYT article and MSNBC article are avialble in the comments.

Congratulations!

Although political violence has been perpetrated on behalf of a wide range of political ideologies, it is unclear whether there are systematic diff...

19/09/2025

A new paper in Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology by our lab members!

Drawing on the Significance Quest Theory (Kruglanski et al., 2022), the authors used the Honor Dictionary (Gelfand et al., 2015) in a word frequency textual analysis (Pennebaker et al., 2007) to investigate extreme rhetoric. They thus conducted two studies. The first, investigating the political context, compared speeches of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1918–1945, N = 284) with those of democratic Presidents of the Italian Republic (1949–2006, N = 901). The second, focused on lone-actors terrorists, examined texts from the Extremist Manifesto Database (EMD, Grigoryan et al., 2023) and compared writings by terrorists driven by political ideologies (left & right-wing, ethno-nationalists, and anti-government, N = 65) with those of terrorists motivated by religious ideologies (N = 23). Notably, the authors hypothesized and found that, compared to democratic rhetoric, fascist rhetoric contained (a) more words expressing feelings of lost honor and (b) fewer words reflecting gaining honor. Moreover, as expected, they found that lone-actor religious terrorists' rhetoric, compared to lone-actor political terrorists, contained more words expressing feelings of lost honor and fewer words expressing honor gain. Notably, this is the first research to use the Honor Dictionary to linguistically measure the activation of the need for significance, demonstrating a strong correlation with the endorsement of extreme ideologies. Further, this research supports the hypothesis that extreme rhetoric reflects–and aims to induce–significance loss feelings.

Congratulations!

Link to the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666622725000127

15/09/2025

We are extremely proud to announce that our lab member, Katarzyna Jaśko, has been awarded the “Outstanding Women in Science” Award on the occasion of the 20th Jubilee Congress of the Polish Social Psychological Society!

The award recognizes her outstanding achievements in the field of social psychology – in particular, her scientific contributions, impact on the development of social psychology, and efforts in popularizing psychological knowledge and its applications in social life.

Congratulations, Kasia! 🎉

02/09/2025

A new paper in Social Indicators Research by our lab members!

Five cross-sectional pre-registered studies (N = 2925) were conducted in different European countries to examine personal economic relative deprivation and perceived ingroup injustice as predictors of alienation from society (i.e., societal alienation), alongside the role of humiliation. Additionally, the authors explored whether the adoption of anti-mainstream identities is linked to the collective roots of societal alienation. Across all studies, anti-mainstream identities were operationalized as identities opposing the status quo, endorsing anti-mainstream narratives, or subjectively defined as anti-mainstream. Results consistently revealed that both personal economic relative deprivation and perceived ingroup injustice significantly predicted societal alienation. Furthermore, anti-mainstream identities exhibited a serial indirect effect on societal alienation through heightened perceived ingroup injustice and experienced humiliation in Studies 1a-3a, and through heightened perceived ingroup injustice in Study 3b. This research contributes to our understanding of the psychological mechanisms underpinning societal alienation, a precursor to various societal outcomes, including the rise of authoritarian populism or political polarization.

Highly recommended!
Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-025-03687-7?fbclid=IwY2xjawMj2E9leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETB3RkFGTWNkV1lpTGpnNmN1AR7jNKkPZdJ-DYYdpmJcz-5HNcqSz15MFHmwt0uGUSbTzWnV6WuamKHDzlDz8g_aem_fdaz4g1PohH53UiCaJZ_gg

07/08/2025

Check out the new special issue of Social Inclusion edited by Miranda Lubbers, Marcin Bukowski, Oliver Christ, Eva Jaspers and Maarten van Zalk!

In recent years, political and social polarization has increased across many societies, evolving from mere issue‐based disagreements into affective polarization, in which citizens dislike and distrust members of opposing groups. This trend undermines social cohesion and the effective functioning of democratic institutions. Despite extensive interdisciplinary research into polarization, the role of social norms—shared expectations about typical and appropriate behavior—in mitigating such divisions remains underexamined. This thematic issue seeks to address this gap by investigating how social norms shape intergroup dynamics in polarized contexts.

In this special issue, you will find articles coauthored by our lab members:

-> Testing the Robustness of the Association Between Personal Respect Norms and Tolerance in Polarized Contexts
by: Lucía Estevan-Reina, Laura Frederica Schäfer, Wilma Middendorf, Marcin Bukowski, Maarten van Zalk and Oliver Christ
-> Mind the Gap! Linking Equality‐Based Respect Norms with General and Specific Tolerance
by: Dominika Gurbisz, Anna Potoczek, Marcin Bukowski, Lucía Estevan-Reina and Oliver Christ
-> (Micro)Identities in Flux: The Interplay of Polarization and Fragmentation in Polish and European Politics
by: Piotr Kłodkowski, Malgorzata Kossowska and Anna Siewierska

View the full list of articles available in special issue here: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/issue/view/438

Highly recommended!

02/07/2025

A new paper in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology!

The aim of this research was to investigate the interrelationships between regional, national, and European identities in Spain, employing the social identity complexity model and the dual model of national identification. Findings from two correlational studies conducted in the two largest Spanish autonomous communities, the more pro-European Castile and León and the less pro-European Andalusia (total N = 1,214), consistently indicated a negative relationship between the complexity of regional-national identity and European identification. Moreover, this relationship was primarily mediated by national identification. Consequently, the results suggest that what matters and contributes to higher-order group identification within nested groups is the similarity and overlap between memberships in lower-order groups, as indicated by lower identity complexity. Furthermore, these studies consistently demonstrate that when controlling for common variance, only more open national attachment, as opposed to more exclusive and closed glorification, positively contributes to European identification.

Well done!

Link to the article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220221251347976

07/05/2025

A new paper in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations by our lab members!

Recent abortion restrictions in the US and Poland sparked widespread protests. This research examined how personal threat influenced collective action intentions through alliances with men and the LGBTIQ+ community (from women’s perspective), and alliances with women (from men’s perspective). It focused on two representations of intergroup cooperation: recategorization as one group and coalitions between distinct groups. In both countries, higher threat levels were linked to greater collective action intentions. For women, this was mediated by coalitions with men in Poland, but not in the US, while coalition with the LGBTIQ+ community mediated the relationship in both countries. Recategorization as one group mobilized women only in Poland when involving the LGBTIQ+ community. For men, coalitions with women mediated the link between threat and collective action in both countries. The findings suggest that coalitions preserving distinct group identities are more effective in advancing women’s rights than recategorization, especially when involving advantaged allies.

Read the whoie article in Open Access here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13684302251328035

15/04/2025

A new paper in Current Psychology by our lab members!

This research explores the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and political engagement within the 3N model of radicalization, extending the Significance Quest Theory. The authors hypothesized that political engagement, both violent and non-violent, results from the interaction between the quest for personal significance (QFS), conspiracy beliefs (CB), and network normative influence (NI). In Study 1 (N = 609), conducted with a general sample of the U.S. population, they found that violent political engagement was individually predicted by QFS, CB, and NI, and resulted from the interaction between QFS and NI. Non-violent political engagement was similarly influenced by these main effects, but also resulted from the interaction between CB and NI. However, the hypothesized three-way interaction was not significant for any type of political engagement. Study 2 (N = 570) focused on an ideologically homogeneous sample—Republican voters strongly supporting the 45th U.S. President Donald Trump. The findings confirmed the main effects of QFS, CB, and NI on both violent and non-violent political engagement. Additionally, the authors observed the theoretically hypothesized three-way interaction in predicting violent political engagement. Specifically, the relationship between QFS and violent political engagement was stronger at higher levels of CB and NI. These findings underscore the significant impact of conspiracy beliefs on political engagement. Notably, within an ideologically homogeneous sample, the willingness to engage in violence was heightened at higher levels of personal significance and network influence, in line with the 3N model.

Link to the article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-025-07710-5?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nonoa_20250415&utm_content=10.1007%2Fs12144-025-07710-5

Congartulations!