University of Silesia in Katowice

Institute of Psychology is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Silesia. It employs 33 people in research positions, including two full professors, five habilitated doctors, nineteen doctors and seven masters.  The Institute’s asset is the young and ambitious team – in 2018/2020 seven employees of the Institute obtained a doctoral degree, most of them with honours. A significant part of the Institute’s researchers are also practitioners – psychotherapists, health psychologists and work psychologists, hence both basic and applied research are undertaken. In addition to scientific activities located in classical research fields of psychology, such as general, organisational, economic, health, social, clinical and forensic psychology, there are also research in cyberpsychology, music psychology, moral psychology, evolutionary psychology, survival psychology and psychosexology. The employees of the Institute of Psychology cooperate with researchers from Polish, European and American universities, which results in a rapid increase in the number of publications in renowned foreign journals. Employees also implement NCN and NCBR (scientific and didactic) grants. The psychology laboratory of the Institute of Psychology enables conducting experiments as well as web-based and experience sampling studies.

There are several national and international research projects currently conducted in the Institute, as for example:

1. Pain of the endangered self. Overt and latent self-assessment, stress response in the face of social threat and thresholds of feeling and tolerance to pain, dr Ewa Wojtyna, 2017-2021, PLN 440 345, National Science Center, Sonata 12.
2. Psychological flexibility in the functioning of the individual, dr Lidia Baran, 2019/2020, National Science Center, Miniatura 12.
3. Psychological POOOWERS – e-learning courses raising the competences of psychology students, PO WER 2014-2020, 383 230,14 zł, dr Patrycja Rudnicka, 2019-2020
4. Severity of early symptoms of postpartum depression and assessment of pain in women in the early puerperium following vaginal delivery and caesarean section, dr Michalina Ilska, 2020, in collaboration with Clinical Gynecology and Obstetrics Ward, Municipal Hospital Ruda Śląska and Medical University of Silesia
5. NEIRE 3 – New European Industrial Relations: Mediation system effectiveness for collective organizational conflicts: A comparative study in Europe, Prof. Dr hab. Barbara Kożusznik, 2016-2018, in collaboration with nine EU countries, 395 036 PLN, Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion DG Programme.
6. Analysis of psychological individual factors promoting adaptation in the COVID-19 pandemic situation, 2020, Prof. Dr hab. Barbara Kożusznik, in collaboration with four EU countries.
7. Between the burden of loss, a sense of injustice and innovative multitasking. The effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic for Polish families and the adaptation strategies developed by them. 2020-2021; prof. Ewa Wojtyna in collaboartaion with: prof. R. Pyka (IS), Prof. Sabina Pawlas-Czyż (IS), prof. Ewa Jarosz (IPE), prof. Agnieszka Turska-Kawa (INP), prof. Patrycja Szostok-Nowacka (IDiKM) (tbc, awaiting of the NCN Covid-19 Fast Track results).

In the years 2019–2020 there were 22 scientific papers published in Polish and 16 in foreign scientific journals such as Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Happiness Studies, Personality and Individual Differences, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,  BMC Psychiatry, Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, Plos One, Journal of Religion and Health, Journal of Career Development, Current Psychology, as for example:    

1. Knapik, K., Sieroń, K., Wojtyna, E., et al., (2019). Precompetitional weight reduction modifies prooxidative-antioxidative status in judokas. Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, 2164698. DOI: 1155/2019/2164698.
2. Ślebarska, K., Soucek, R., & Moser, K. (2019). Increasing Proactive Coping in Organizational Newcomers: Improving Job Adaptation or Rocking the Boat?. Journal of Career Development, 46(3), 295-313. DOI: 10.1177/0894845318763947.
3. Landy, J.F., Jia, M.L., Ding, I.L,…Paruzel-Czachura, M. … & Uhlmann, E.L. (2020). Crowdsourcing hypothesis tests: Making transparent how design choices shape research results. Psychological Bulletin. Online First Publication. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000220.
4. Górnik-Durose, M.E. (2020). Materialism and Well Being Revisited: The Impact of Personality. Journal of Happiness Studies, 21, 305-326. DOI: 1007/s10902-019-00089-8.
5. Moroń, M. (2020). The affect balance and depressiveness as mediators between trait emotional intelligence and life satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 155. 109732. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2019.109732.
6. Pilch, I. (2020). As cold as a fish? Relationships between the Dark Triad personality traits and affective experience during the day: A day reconstruction study. PLOS ONE, 15(2), e0229625. DOI: 1371/journal.pone.0229625.

In 2019, researchers of Institute of Psychology participated in 27 Polish and 16 foreign scientific conferences. The Institute organised three conferences with a total of 417 participants. In 2020 there are several scientific events planned, such as Cross-European School On Musical Ability organised in collaboration with European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, the 3rd Polish Conference on Psychology of Femininity and Masculinity and Close Interpersonal Relations or the 5th National Scientific Conference Katowice Psychometric Meetings ‘Accuracy – theory and practice’.

Currently the employees of the Institute work for or collaborate with following scientific organisations: Association for Contextual Behavior Science Poland (Secretary and Treasurer), International Association of Applied Psychology IAAP (President Division 1 Work and Organizational Psychology), Alliance for Organizational Psychology (member of the Board of Representatives), Polish Association of Organizational Psychology (President), Health Psychology Section of Polish Psychological Association (member of the Board), among others.