Publications by authors named "Tomasz Besta"

The Towards Gender Harmony (TGH) project began in September 2018 with over 160 scholars who formed an international consortium to collect data from 62 countries across six continents. Our overarching goal was to analyze contemporary perceptions of masculinity and femininity using quantitative and qualitative methods, marking a groundbreaking effort in social science research. The data collection took place between January 2018 and February 2020, and involved undergraduate students who completed a series of randomized scales and the data was collected through the SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics platforms, with paper surveys being used in rare cases.

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As transparency is believed to be a key factor linked to trust in the government, we explore the link between the perceived lack of transparency and COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Two studies were conducted (1 = 264 and 2 = 113) using both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) designs. The results show a positive relationship between the perception of a lack of transparencies in the context of pandemic policies (Study 1), general lack of transparency in the decision-making process (Study 2), and belief in conspiracy theories about the emergence of the COVID-19 virus and vaccines' related fake news.

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Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, = 96; Study 3b, = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader.

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Gender stereotypes serve as psychological tools that justify and maintain social inequality and reinforce the widely recognized status quo. Agency and anti-femininity are two widely prescribed qualities for men across cultures, leading them to refrain from engaging in household duties and parental roles (also referred to as communal roles). Several studies have documented backlash against men who engage in communal roles, but little attention has been given to the cultural and contextual cues influencing the perceptions of men who violate gender-norm prescriptions.

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The backlash avoidance model (BAM) suggests women insufficiently self-promote because they fear backlash for behavior which is incongruent with traditional gender roles. Avoiding self-promoting behavior is also potentially related to associating success with negative consequences. In two studies we tested whether self-promotion and fear of success will be predictors of lower salaries and anticipation of lower chances of success in an exam.

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The characteristics of built environments are the subject of intense consideration in the search for solutions to promote wellbeing and a higher quality of life among the inhabitants of cities. Walkability, defined as the extent to which the built environment is friendly to living and fulfilling the needs of the area, has become an important concept in sustainable urban design, public health and environmental psychology. This study systematically adapted the Neighbourhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS) for Poland, and evaluated the construct validity aspects of the adapted version among Polish adults.

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Sociologists coined the term "anomie" to describe societies that are characterized by disintegration and deregulation. Extending beyond conceptualizations of anomie that conflate the measurements of anomie as 'a state of society' and as a 'state of mind', we disentangle these conceptualizations and develop an analysis and measure of this phenomenon focusing on anomie as a perception of the 'state of society'. We propose that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a perceived breakdown in social fabric (i.

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Identity fusion theory suggests that merging groups into one's personal identity should result in heightened levels of group agency. Research on the self-expansion model complementarily indicates that including others into the self is linked to a greater feeling of self-efficacy. Across three correlational studies, we examined whether personal and group identity fusion is associated with stronger feelings of personal agency, and we propose that relatively stable feelings of clarity of self-concept would mediate this association.

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Two studies ( = 190 and  = 447) were conducted to investigate the link between living in walkable neighborhoods and satisfaction with life in a city. Additionally, we explore possible mediators of this relationship. In both studies walkability was a significant predictor of perceived quality of life in a city, and overlap between personal and communal identity (in Study 1 and Study 2) and city identification (Study 2) were mediators of the walkability-quality of life relation.

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We sought to identify the mechanisms that cause strongly fused individuals (those who have a powerful, visceral feeling of oneness with the group) to make extreme sacrifices for their group. A large multinational study revealed a widespread tendency for fused individuals to endorse making extreme sacrifices for their country. Nevertheless, when asked which of several groups they were most inclined to die for, most participants favored relatively small groups, such as family, over a large and extended group, such as country (Study 1).

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The present study concerns the relationship between self-concept clarity, religiosity, and well-being, as well as the mediating influence of religiosity on the relationship between self-concept clarity and sense of meaning in life and self-esteem. Self-concept clarity was found to be a significant predictor of sense of meaning in life and self-esteem; intrinsic religious orientation was found to be a predictor of sense of meaning in life, while the quest religious orientation was a predictor for self-esteem. The cross-products of self-concept clarity and intrinsic religious orientation were found to be related to the sense of purpose in life, which would point to religiosity being a mediator of the relationship between self-concept clarity and sense of purpose in life.

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