Bogdan Wojciszke

• Ph D
• SWPS University

Moral psychology is booming and recent years brought a large body of research on moral judgments and impressions. We review up to date results about this important constituent of human morality focusing mainly on: (1) how deontology vs. utilitarianism drives moral judgments, (2) what is the role of intuition and deliberation in moral judgments, (3)...

Previous work suggests that perceived importance of an object influences estimates of its weight. Specifically, important books were estimated to be heavier than non-important books. However, the experimental set-up of these studies may have suffered from a potential confound and findings may be confined to books only. Addressing this, we investiga...

Based on Heider’s (1958) balance theory we hypothesize that emotional responses to other persons’ outcomes depend on attitudes toward these persons. Positive attitudes toward others lead to empathic responses to their outcomes – joy after a success and sorrow after a failure. Negative attitudes result in paradoxical responses – negative to a succes...

The automatic and affective nature of moral judgments leads to the expectation that these judgments are biased by an observer's own interests. Although the idea of self-interest bias is old, it has never been directly tested with respect to the moral judgments of other individuals' behaviors. The participants of three experiments observed other ind...

Morality is a prominent guide of both action and perception. We argue that non-emotional gestures can prime the abstract concept of honesty. Four studies demonstrated that the emblematic gesture associated with honesty (putting a hand on one’s heart) increased the level of honesty perceived by others, and increased the honesty showed in one’s own b...

According to the “beautiful is moral” stereotype, people perceive attractive individuals as more moral than unattractive ones. To refine this stereotype, we examined liking as a mediator and belief in a just world (BJW) as a moderator of this effect. Study 1 (N = 788; US sample) and Study 2 (N = 1913; Polish sample) confirmed that highly attractive...

Young children from a very early age not only prefer those who help others but also those who engage in altruistic helping. This study aims to test how children assess helping when the goal of the helping behavior is immoral. We argue that younger children consider only the helping versus hindering behavior, but older children distinguish their jud...

Recent research has shown that moral character judgments are prone to the liking bias—well-liked people are seen as morally superior to disliked or neutral ones. However, whether moral information about their past behavior would moderate the liking bias is still an open empirical question addressed in present studies. In Study 1 (N = 653), particip...

When individuals engage in job crafting by decreasing their job demands, the workload of their teammates rises. Pursuing self-interest at the expense of others requires holding a belief about the antagonistic nature of human relations. The present research demonstrates how belief in life as a zero-sum game (BZSG) shapes workplace behaviors. Our two...

We consider need for sense-making a personal resource and propose that people differ in their levels of this need. We present results of five studies (N = 879) that tested Need for Sense-Making Scale (NSM). The scale is unidimensional, highly reliable, and has satisfactory construct and criterion validity. Need for sense-making was moderately posit...

Previous research found evidence for a liking bias in moral character judgments because judgments of liked people are higher than those of disliked or neutral ones. The present article sought conditions moderating this effect. In Study 1 (N = 792), the impact of the liking bias on moral character judgments was strongly attenuated when participants...

In this article, we examine how group identity and protection of group interests shape morality judgments. We argue that actions serving ingroup interests are more likely to be judged as moral (or less immoral) than the same actions that do not serve ingroup interests. However, this group-interest bias should be especially strong among those high i...

Young children display strong aversion toward antisocial individuals, but also feel responsible for joint activities and express a strong sense of group loyalty. This paper aims to understand how beneficial cooperation with an antisocial partner shapes preschoolers’ attitudes, preferences, and moral judgments concerning antisocial individuals. We a...

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 mor...

We review past and recent literature on how egocentrism shapes moral judgements. We focus on mechanisms by which egocentric evaluations appear to people as objective, impartial, and morally right. We also show that people seem to be unaware of these biases and suggest that understanding how egocentrism impacts moral judgements demands studying mora...

Many studies have explored the evaluative effects of vertical (up/down) or horizontal (left/right) spatial locations. However, little is known about the role of information that comes from the front and back. Based on multiple theoretical considerations, we propose that spatial location of sounds is a cue for message valence, such that a message co...

Many studies have explored the evaluative effects of vertical (up/down) or horizontal (left/right) spatial locations. However, little is known about the role of information that comes from the front and back. Basing our investigations on multiple theoretical considerations, we propose that spatial location of sounds is a cue for message valence, su...

We define the need for sense-making as the desire to find reliable connections between the objects, situations, and relationships that people encounter. We have proposed and tested that there are possible individual differences in the need for sense-making and that these individual differences are insightful in characterizing individuals and their...

There is a growing debate about the relationship between self-perceived agency-communion and self-esteem. One viewpoint for this debate is offered by the Dual Perspective Model, a novel theoretical framework that introduces the agent and the recipient as two fundamental perspectives in social perception. Building on this model, we expected higher i...

Regression results using self esteem as the criterion presented separately for each study (1–6). b represents unstandardized regression weights. beta indicates the standardized regression weights. LL and UL indicate the lower and upper limits of a confidence interval, respectively. * indicates p < .05. ** indicates p < .01. (DOCX)

Descriptive statistics and differences in state self-esteem, self-ascribed agentic and communal traits between agent and recipient conditions in experiments.1,2,3,4,5 and 6. In Experiments 5 and 6 means that do not share the same letter within one variable are significantly different at the p < .05. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .01 (DOCX)

This article introduces the Perspectives Questionnaire (PQ), a self-rated measure of propensities to take agentand recipient perspectives in social cognition. Each social interaction involves two separate perspectives–that ofan agent (a person who performs an action) and that of a recipient (a person at whom the action is directed andwho experience...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

Czy w Polsce żyją obok siebie dwa narody? Czy po ponad ćwierćwieczu demokracji nasza mentalność uległa zmianie? Jaki jest jej obecny stan? Jakie cechy odróżniają nas od innych społeczeństw? Odpowiedzi na te pytania udzielają w książce psychologowie społeczni, prowadzący od kilkudziesięciu lat empiryczne badania polskiego społeczeństwa…

We agree with Doliński (2018, this issue) that behavior is disappearing as an object of study of contemporary social psychology and it has been increasingly replaced by verbal declarations of imagined behaviors, which are analyzed as dependent variables. We read this as a case of a methodological version of Gresham’s law: “bad methods drive out goo...

The current research focused on individual difference – propensity to take the agent perspective, in order to test if it moderates the well-established relationship between agency and self-esteem. We present three correlational studies examining if propensity to take the agent perspective is related to valuing agentic traits (Preliminary Study, N =...

Not much is known about the cognitive consequences of success and failure, and there is no comprehensive theory explaining their aftermath. Building on a dual-perspective model of social cognition, we offer such a preliminary theory that assumes that experiencing success induces an agentic perspective, whereas experiencing failure induces a recipie...

As love seems to be universal, researchers have attempted to find its biological basis. However, no studies till date have shown its direct association with reproductive success, which is broadly known to be a good measure of fitness. Here, we show links between love, as defined by the Sternberg Triangular Theory of Love, and reproductive success a...

The effect of free mate choice on the relative magnitude of fitness benefits has been examined among various species. The majority of the data show significant fitness benefits of mating with partners of an individual’s own choice, highlighting elevated behavioral compatibility between partners with free mate choice. Similarities between humans and...

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie właściwości psychometrycznych Kwestionariusza przekonań politycz-nych. Składają się na niego cztery podwymiary: fundamentalizm religijny i ksenofobia, tworzące wymiar przekonań kulturowych, oraz akceptacja kapitalizmu i antyinterwencjonizm, tworzące wymiar przekonań ekonomicznych. W artykule przedstawimy dowody na...

Research on culture-related violence has typically focused on honor cultures and their justification of certain forms of aggression as reactions to provocation. In contrast, amusement and humor as the preferred reactions to provocation remain understudied phenomena, especially in a cross-cultural context. In an attempt to remedy this, participants...

Niniejszy artykuł przeglądowy opisuje współczesny dorobek psychologii ocen moralnych. W przeszłości eksperymenty nad ocenami moralnymi najczęściej sprowadzały się do wyobrażania sobie przez uczestników wyjątkowo ekstremalnych i nietypowych dylematów moralnych. W niniejszym artykule dokumentujemy aktualny stan wiedzy na ten temat oraz wyraźną zmianę...

In most individualistic cultures, pride is regarded as a positive emotion that follows a positive evaluation of one’s competence or effort when achieving a goal. Fredrickson (2001) suggests that pride may expand individuals’ scope of attention and broaden their action repertoires by driving them toward greater achievements in the future. In the pre...

Research has shown that cheating is perceived as immoral when it serves the cheater’s interests, though it can be seen as moral when it serves the interests of the perceiver. However, are such biased moral judgments real, or are they merely lip service? To answer the question of whether biased moral judgments actually inform behavior, the authors a...

A substantial amount of research showed that agency (concerning goal attainment) and communion (concerning relationships maintenance) are two basic dimensions of content in social cognition. Based on the well-supported idea that people typically think about themselves and close others in agentic rather than communal terms, we tested the hypothesis...

Are people able to objectively evaluate fairness of the principles ruling the distribution of goods? Such principles often encourage or threaten their own interests and as such people may lose objectivity. But maybe howling injustice is evaluated positively if it is in favour of one’s interest? We present three experiments, that aim to verify the h...

This article introduces a novel concept, Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG), proposed as another belief dimension in the family of social axioms. We conceptualize BZSG as a belief system about the antagonistic nature of social relations—that one person's gain is possible only at the expense of other persons. It appears on a level of personal convicti...

This article introduces a novel concept, Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG), proposed as another belief dimension in the family of social axioms. We conceptualize BZSG as a belief system about the antagonistic nature of social relations—that one person’s gain is possible only at the expense of other persons. It appears on a level of personal convicti...

Although status and wealth are related facets of social stratification, their association is only moderate. In this article, we demonstrate that justification of wealth versus status can be independent processes. To this end, we introduce a novel, nondeclarative measure of system justification. The measure is based on within-individual correlations...

We summarize and integrate a large body of research showing that agency and communion constitute two fundamental dimensions of content in social cognition. Agentic content refers to goal-achievement and task functioning (competence, assertiveness, decisiveness), whereas communal content refers to the maintenance of relationships and social function...

Previous studies (Bocian & Wojciszke, 2014) showed that self-interest biases moral perception of others’ unethical actions. Moreover, affective changes in attitudinal responses towards the perpetrator of an immoral act drives the bias. In the present studies, we attempted to answer the question whether people are aware of the self-interest bias in...

The dual perspective model of agency and communion predicts that observers tend to interpret a target’s behavior more in terms of communion than agency, whereas actors interpret their behavior more in terms of agency. The present research for the first time tests this model in real interactions. Previously unacquainted participants had a short conv...

Two hypotheses concerning the relative importance of agentic versus communal traits as predictors of self-esteem were tested. The perspective hypothesis assumed that self-esteem is dominated by agency over communion because self-perceptions are formed from the agent (versus recipient) perspective. The culture hypothesis assumed that self-esteem is...

Based on the balance theory (Heider, 1958), we hypothesized that emotions (i.e., schadenfreude, resentment, joy and sorrow) induced by other person’s outcomes function as responses restoring balance within cognitive units consisting of the perceiver, other persons and their outcomes. As a consequence, emotional reactions towards others’ outcomes de...

Participants of two experiments judged morality and agency of soldiers who successfully executed a diversion action behind the enemy lines and who were either members of their own or the enemy army. In study 1 (N = 100) participants (professional soldiers) ascribed more agency to in-group than out-group soldiers. They also judged the diversion acti...

Motor movements increase the accessibility of the thought content and processes with which they typically co-occur. In two studies, we demonstrate that putting a hand on one's heart is associated with honesty, both perceived in others and shown in one's own behavior. Target persons photographed when performing this gesture appeared more trustworthy...

Basing on the popular distinction between controlled and automatic psychological processes we present results of the debate between rationalistic versus intuitionistic accounts of moral judgments. These judgments are a joint product of automatic and controlled processes and because the former are fast and continuous, they play a greater role than t...

Dotychczasowe badania nad wiarą w grę o sumie zerowej na próbach polskich wykazały, że wiara w grę jako przekonanie o antagonistycznej naturze relacji wiąże się z wieloma negatywnymi konsekwencjami społecznymi. Niniejszy artykuł przedstawia wiarę w grę o sumie zerowej w nowym międzykulturowym kontekście, jako uniwersalny aksjomat społeczny, nieopis...

The double perspective model (DPM) assumes that every social interaction involves two perspectives – that of the agent (a person who performs an action) and that of the recipient (a person toward whom the action is directed). Agency and communion constitute two basic dimensions of social cognition because they denote these two perspectives. In effe...

This editorial introduces the current special issue of Social Psychology discussing the topic of two fundamental content dimensions which underlie judgments of the self, others, social groups, nations, cultures, faces, etc. These two fundamental dimensions are also called the “Big Two.” These “Big Two” have the potential to integrate different line...

Conceptual representations of warmth have been shown to be related to people’s perceptions of ambient temperature. Based on this premise, we hypothesized that merely thinking about personality traits related to communion (but not agency) influences physical experience of warmth. Specifically, the three studies revealed that (a) perceptions of tempe...

Conceptual representations of warmth have been shown to be related to people's perceptions of ambient temperature. Based on this premise, we hypothesized that merely thinking about personality traits related to communion (but not agency) influences physical experience of warmth. Specifically, the three studies revealed that (a) perceptions of tempe...

Conceptual representations of warmth have been shown to be related to people's perceptions of ambient temperature. Based on this premise, we hypothesized that merely thinking about personality traits related to communion (but not agency) influences physical experience of warmth. Specifically, the three studies revealed that (a) perceptions of tempe...

We present a Double Perspective Model (DPM) explaining why agency (competence) and communion (warmth) constitute two basic content dimensions of social cognition. Every social action involves two perspectives: of the agent (a person who performs an action) and of the recipient (a person at whom the action is directed). Immediate cognitive goals of...

Scales Measuring Agency and Communion Based on the ideas of Bakan (1966) and Helgeson (2003) we devised Polish language scales measuring Agency (defined as focus on the self and own goals), Communion (focus on other people and interpersonal relations), Unmitigated Agency (excessive focus on the self with exclusion of communion), and Unmitigated Com...

Liking and respect are proposed as two dimensions of interpersonal attitudes. Whereas liking–disliking reflects personal preferences, respect–disrespect reflects deference. Four studies involving a variety of samples and target persons showed that: (1) liking is more strongly influenced by communal than agentic qualities of the target, (2) respect...

In four experiments mood was measured before and after complaining or affrmation. Participants complained or affrmed either themselves or listened to such communications of another person. Mood decreased after complaining and increased after affrmation - a “saying is experiencing” (SIE) effect. This effect was found also in the cognitive load condi...

Agency (A) and communion (C) are basic dimensions of social judgment and C is typically more important than A. Building on the two-interest account of bidimensionality of social cognition, we hypothesized that this “C over A” pattern is typical for judging distant persons but is attenuated or even reversed when people judge the self or interdepende...

Despite many convergences in theorizing and research on the two fundamental dimensions of social judgment the operationalizations differ considerably across studies and possible confounds (valence, frequency of word occurrence) are not always controlled. The present study was meant as a first step towards a more standardized operationalization by p...

Agentic qualities are associated with self-interests of the trait possessor and communal qualities are associated with interests of other people (with whom the trait possessor interacts with). Based on this idea we hypothesized that information on behavior serving self-interests leads to inferences of agency while information on identical actions p...

Agency is—besides communion—a basic dimension of traits. It can be specifically linked to behavioral outcomes, to status, mastery, self-esteem and to success. The present paper analyzes the situational malleability of agency. Two studies tested whether an individual's agency (but not communion) is situationally influenced by the experience of succe...

On the basis of previous research, the authors hypothesize that (a) person descriptive terms can be organized into the broad dimensions of agency and communion of which communion is the primary one; (b) the main distinction between these dimensions pertains to their profitability for the self (agency) vs. for other persons (communion); hence, agenc...

Two studies are reported where high-versus low-power positions were induced through recalling autobiographical events or by serving a supervisory or subordinate role in a task. Both affective states and global self-esteem increased as a result of elevated power while lowered power resulted in decreases in affect and self-esteem. Changes in self-est...

Based on the idea that Polish society actively delegitimizes the economical and political order we predicted that persons successful in business or politics would be perceived as less moral than failing ones. Participants (N=210 students) read vignettes describing businessmen or politicians who succeeded or failed in their activity and then rated t...

Attitudes towards other people were compared in two situations: When a direct, everyday contact with the others continues, and after the contact has been closed. Study 1 (N = 97 students) showed that in the first, “contact” situation the attitude is much more ambivalent than in the other, “no contact” situation. Study 2 (N = 105 secondary school st...

Morality and competence are posited to constitute two basic kinds of content in person- and self-perception. Moral content dominates person-perception because it typically has a direct and unconditional bearing on the well-being of other people surrounding the person who is described by the trait (including the perceiver). Competence dominates self...

A research program on the affective concomitants of information on morality (M) and competence (C) is reviewed. The program originated from the assumption that M and C are the most important categories of behavior construal and that both categories can be, and are, used in interpretation of the same behavioral acts. Whereas in the observer perspect...

It is proposed that a culture of complaining thrives in Poland. Building blocks of this culture include: (1) the norm of negativity of one’s own states, (2) the norm of negativity of the social world, and (3) behavioral scripts of complaining (rituals of expressing dissatisfaction). Various results of both experimental and correlational research ar...

Based on appraisal theories of emotion and self-other differences in information processing, we explored differences in emotional responses to own and others' behaviours. Participants of two studies reported emotions experienced in response to their own success and failure or moral behaviour and transgression (Study 1, N= 200) or reported their res...

Based on the notion that approach-avoidance underlies impression formation processes and that approach-avoidance is more directly based on appraisals of others' morality (M) than competence (C), we hypothesized that M-related information played a more important role at various phases of global impression formation than C-related information on targ...

Elicited positive and negative traits most typical for the morality (M) and competence (C) domain and asked different groups of students (total N = 204) to rate the traits for various parameters. Based on several theories comparing M vs C domains the authors predicted M traits to be other-profitable and desirable in other people to a higher degree...

The distinction between individualistic (IV) and collectivistic (CV) instrumental values was compared to the distinction between competence-related and moral personality traits. Study 1 (N=89 students) showed that IV referred mostly to competence and were self-profitable, whereas CV referred mostly to morality and were other-profitable in their nat...

A Polish national sample of 1050 adults (aged 18–82 yrs) was asked to show their approval of the Polish president and to ascribe 14 personality traits to him. As predicted, trait ascriptions were underlain by 3 factors: morality, competence, and likability. Morality appeared the strongest, likability the weakest predictor of the approval of the pre...

One of the phenomena of Poles adjusting to the systemic transformation is their attitude toward the past. In this article, the results of two survey studies are presented. More than 42% of the Polish population feels that it has been wronged by the past. The analysis showed that three models of feeling wronged occur, differing in terms of what is p...

Multiplicity of behavior features gives rise to its different interpretations (in addition to behavior vagueness and ambiguity typically studied in social cognition research). Particularly, identical actions are construable both in moral and competence-related categories due to distinct behavioral features underlying each of these interpretations....

In two experiments subjects inferred perceivers attitudes toward target girls of varied physical attractiveness. Subjects could select traits from a provided list and ask whether the perceiver ascribed to the target each of those traits. After each question they received feedback about the perceiver s trait ascriptions. The nature of the traits bei...

In Study 1, 60-item sets of behavioural acts exemplifying a personality trait were elicited for each of 40 traits. Each set of behaviours was then rated by 66 students for their inferential meaning (prototypicality) and evaluative meaning (valence). As predicted, the traits differed in the degree of congruence between the two meanings of their exem...

Extends models that assume that the integration of mixed (positive and negative) information results in a negativity bias in the morality domain but a positivity bias in the competence domain. Using functional analysis, this study predicted a positivity bias for moderately evaluated information and a negativity bias for extremely evaluated informat...

Evaluated the hypotheses that impression enhancement and deteriorations are slower in the morality than the ability domain, and that subjective predictions of target persons' future behaviors are based on purely evaluative responses toward targets to a higher degree when the behavior pertains to morality rather than to abilities. Both hypotheses we...

Reviews studies on the prototypical structure (PS) of personality trait concepts and its consequences on different processes underlying person perception. The research suggests that PS is a universal phenomenon in the personality-trait concepts domain. Internal trait structure seems to play a double role in personal perception processes. First, the...

Two experiments were conducted to examine the role of the ‘idealism’ variable and sew-focus in value-behaviour consistency. The idealism variable was measured by means of a questionnaire (Idealism Scale–IS) devised by the author. The scale is based on the assumption that although every individual is able to declare his or her ideal-self if requeste...

Describes the Idealism Scale (IS), a 31-item self-report questionnaire for the measurement of individual differences in regulatory functions of the ideal self. The IS was originally devised by the present author (1986; see also PA, Vol 75:23436) on the assumption that, although every individual is able to declare his/her ideal self if requested, on...

Three groups of determinants and correlates of cognitive complexity (conceptualized and measured after J. Bieri et al, 1960) were studied in the context of interpersonal perception: properties of perceived persons, properties of cognitive dimensions, and interindividual differences. Ss were 113 undergraduates. Persons little known to Ss, negatively...

examines trait–behavior relations along common traits such as honesty, intelligence, and extraversion / explore the structure of these relations, the underlying psychological principles that are involved, and the place of these relations in social cognition describe four types of traits, each of which has a different pattern of trait–behavior rel...