Publications by authors named "Katarzyna Cantarero"

This research aimed to provide experimental evidence on whether identifying an edible animal by a name and specific preferences encourages children to perceive the animal as more similar to humans, increases their willingness to befriend the animal, and makes them less willing to consume it. In two pre-registered studies involving 208 preschool children, participants were presented with pictures of pigs (Study 1) and chickens (Study 2). In the identifiability condition, one animal was depicted with individual qualities such as a name and personal preferences, while in the non-identifiability condition, animals were portrayed with characteristics representative of the entire species.

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People differ in the extent to which they express a need for sense-making (NSM), and these individual differences are important to understand in light of meaning-making processes. To quantify this important variable, we originally proposed a need for sense-making scale. We now propose a refined, similarly reliable short version of the scale (NSM-SF).

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In this article, we focus on how people resolve the dilemma between honest feedback and a prosocial lie depending on the context. In a pre-registered study ( = 455), we asked participants to choose between telling the blatant truth or lying prosocially regarding a dish made poorly by a stranger. The results showed that participants were most eager to pass on overly positive feedback when the stranger cared about cooking and was very sensitive to negative feedback.

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We tested whether a short, online meaning intervention boosts momentary work engagement (MWE) through an increase in perceived work meaningfulness. In Study 1 ( = 227), employees who were asked to write why their work was meaningful subsequently experienced higher work meaningfulness and higher MWE compared to a control group. Work meaningfulness mediated the relationship between the intervention and MWE.

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A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating behaviours in non-human animals. However, research examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates.

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Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors.

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Children's food marketers very often use anthropomorphism in advertising as if it is an effective technique aimed at increasing food consumption. However, the evidence supporting this effect is mixed. In this research, we propose that while a food product's humanlike appearance (physical anthropomorphism) may increase consumption, attribution of mental states and emotions (psychological anthropomorphism) to a physically anthropomorphized food product discourages consumption because it facilitates the formation of a social-like relationship with the food.

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The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale - STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined more than 11,000 respondents, but as a result of applied exclusion criteria, the final analyses were based on a sample of 7332 participants from 25 countries (from all inhabited continents).

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Considerable research has examined human mate preferences across cultures, finding universal sex differences in preferences for attractiveness and resources as well as sources of systematic cultural variation. Two competing perspectives-an evolutionary psychological perspective and a biosocial role perspective-offer alternative explanations for these findings. However, the original data on which each perspective relies are decades old, and the literature is fraught with conflicting methods, analyses, results, and conclusions.

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This article presents the findings of four studies designed to validate the translated Polish version of the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale. Results of exploratory factor analyses in Study 1 ( = 272, = 41.07) showed that the psychological need for autonomy, relatedness, and competence that are central to the Self-Determination Theory have a bidimensional structure, involving both a need for satisfaction and need for frustration component.

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Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across these many preference dimensions into summaries of the overall mate value of their potential mates.

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Responses to norm violators are poorly understood. On one hand, norm violators are perceived as powerful, which may help them to get ahead. On the other hand, norm violators evoke moral outrage, which may frustrate their upward social mobility.

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Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown.

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People who exclude meat from their diets are not only devoid of situational pressures to disengage morally and deny humanlike mental states to animals but also they may be dispositionally more inclined to ascribe human-like qualities to non-human animals than omnivores. The aim of this research was to test whether individual differences in anthropomorphism are related to empathic connection with non-human animals and hence decreased meat consumption. In two studies (N = 588) we confirmed that decreased meat consumption was associated with both increased recognition of human features of animals and increased empathy to animals.

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Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) reported that participants primed with a category associated with intelligence ("professor") subsequently performed 13% better on a trivia test than participants primed with a category associated with a lack of intelligence ("soccer hooligans"). In two unpublished replications of this study designed to verify the appropriate testing procedures, Dijksterhuis, van Knippenberg, and Holland observed a smaller difference between conditions (2%-3%) as well as a gender difference: Men showed the effect (9.3% and 7.

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In this article we show that when analyzing attitude towards lying in a cross-cultural setting, both the beneficiary of the lie (self vs other) and the context (private life vs. professional domain) should be considered. In a study conducted in Estonia, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and Sweden (N = 1345), in which participants evaluated stories presenting various types of lies, we found usefulness of relying on the dimensions.

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Previous studies have shown that the hand-over-heart gesture is related to being more honest as opposed to using self-centered dishonesty. We assumed that the hand-over-heart gesture would also relate to other-oriented dishonesty, though the latter differs highly from self-centered lying. In Study 1 ( = 79), we showed that performing a hand-over-heart gesture diminished the tendency to use other-oriented white lies and that the fingers crossed behind one's back gesture was not related to higher dishonesty.

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