Our Lab at the 21st Annual Meeting of Polish Social Psychological Society

From 17th to 19th of September 2026, members of our lab participated in the 21st Annual Meeting of Polish Social Psychological Society (PSPS), held in Warsaw (organized by the University of Warsaw and Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, and SWPS University). Throughout the conference, our team presented findings from several ongoing projects related to research on, e.g. collective narcissism, populism, religiosity, and spirituality.

On the first day, Paweł Borysiewicz and Maciej Marzec presented their own research in the session “Collective Narcissism in the Social Context”. Paweł Borysiewicz presented “The role of narcissistic strategies in coping with individual service related stress among the uniformed disaster relief force in Polish 2024 flood mitigation effort”, while Maciej Marzec presented “Chaos and the Nation: Divergent Effects of Secure Identification and Collective Narcissism”. On the second day, Michał Sękowski presented "Narcissism Circumplex Model and Problematic Pornography Use".

On 18 September, our team presented research on a new measure of populism developed as part of the OPUS project (No. 2024/55/B/HS6/00282) in a symposium - “On the Way to Populism: Collective Narcissism, Authoritarianism, Identity, and Conspiracy Beliefs”, with Piotr Radkiewicz as the chair, and Vassilis Saroglou as the discussant.

The presentations included:

• Piotr Radkiewicz presented “Populism: An Attempt to Clarify the Construct and Proposal for a New Measurement”.

• Eryk Kowalski presented “Agentic and Communal Collective Narcissism and Populist Attitudes: The Role of Left- and Right-Wing Authoritarianism”.

• Oliwia Stopka presented “Two Faces of Collective Narcissism: Agentic and Communal Pathways to Populist Attitudes via Conspiracy Beliefs”.

• Bartłomiej Nowak presented “When “We Are the Best” Meets Populist Politics: Populist Vote Share as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Collective Narcissism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism”.

Our lab also contributed to the symposium “Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Political Psychology”, with Jarosław Piotrowski serving as discussant. The symposium included a presentation by Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska - “The Dimensionality of Right-Wing Authoritarianism: Cross-Cultural Evidence for the Validity of the KSA-3 in 58 Countries Across the Globe”.

The conference also featured a panel discussion moderated by Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska – “Ethical or Pragmatic? The Social Psychologist as Researcher, Lecturer, and Science Communicator”. The panelists discussed the complex role of social psychologists and the challenges of balancing ethical values with the demands of academic research and science communication.

The Annual Meeting of Polish Social Psychology Society was a great opportunity to share our research findings from the past academic year, exchange ideas with colleagues in social psychology and related fields, and put our organizational skills to test through our extensive involvement in organizing the conference.