John B. Nezlek

SWPS University | SWPS · Faculty in Pozńan

The present study examined relationships between social value orientation and personal values. Participants, n = 1655, were university students (Mage = 18.9 years, 60% women) who completed the Triple Dominance Measure, a measure of social value orientation, and the PVQ-21, a measure of Schwartz’s personal values. Two items were added to the PVQ-21...

We examined relationships between restrained eating and personality and self-esteem in a sample of 4382 undergraduates attending a university in the US, Mage = 18.9, SD = 1.42. Restrained eating was measured using the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire, personality was measured using the BFI-44, and self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg sel...

Background There is considerable interest among personality psychologists in authenticity. To provide researchers with a tool to study dispositional authenticity among speakers of Polish, we created a Polish language version of Wood et al.’s multidimension-al measure of authenticity. Wood et al.’s measure has 12 items and measures three constructs:...

This issue commences with a bibliometric analysis of the top 100 most cited articles on religion. It then presents the first of a two-part series relating to research from Poland and progresses to examine the relevance of religion and spirituality to public health. Finally, this issue revisits the long-established and productive discipline of healt...

Cel pracy Celem pracy była polska adaptacja skróconej Skali Współczucia Wobec Siebie (SCS-SF) oraz ocena jej właściwości psychometrycznych i struktury czynnikowej. Metoda W badaniu wzięły udział 596 osoby dorosłe (wieku 18-50 lat) z populacji ogólnej w tym 459 kobiet oraz dodatkowo 47 osób które zbadano dwa razy z miesięcznym odroczeniem celem oce...

Research on the extent to which people believe that people can change (incremental beliefs) suggests that incrementalist beliefs are positively related to well-being, whereas entity beliefs (people cannot change) are not. One explanation for this relationship is that incremental beliefs are associated with a mastery orientation, whereas entity beli...

The present study examined changes in the rates of vegetarianism among a sample of young American adults. Over 15 years, students at an American university (N = 12,704) described their dietary habits. Multilevel modeling analyses (participants nested within semesters) found that overall, the percentage of vegetarians increased over time, whereas th...

Background and Objective

Participants, 672 US collegians, listed four words/terms that first came to mind when thinking of vegans, non-vegan vegetarians, and omnivores. Participants generated 1264 unique descriptors, which two sets of raters, who were blind to the source of the descriptors, rated on 10 dimensions that included the valence of the descriptors (i.e., positive...

(in Polish) Cel pracy Celem pracy była polska adaptacja skróconej Skali Współczucia Wobec Siebie (SCS-SF) oraz ocena jej właściwości psychometrycznych i struktury czynnikowej. Metoda W badaniu wzięły udział 596 osoby dorosłe (wieku 18-50 lat) z populacji ogólnej w tym 459 kobiet oraz dodatkowo 47 osób które zbadano dwa razy z miesięcznym odroczenie...

How do daily fluctuations in aggression relate to daily variability in affect and self‐esteem? Although research has examined how trait aggression relates to affect and self‐esteem, state aggression has received little attention. To this end, we had 120 US undergraduates participate in a 14‐day daily diary study where they responded to state‐level...

Understanding what factors are linked to public health behavior in a global pandemic is critical to mobilizing an effective public health response. Although public policy and health messages are often framed through the lens of individual benefit, many of the behavioral strategies needed to combat a pandemic require individual sacrifices to benefit...

How do daily fluctuations in aggression relate to daily variability in affect and self-esteem? Although research has examined how trait aggression relates to affect and self-esteem, state aggression has received little attention. To this end, we had 120 U.S. undergraduates participate in a 14-day daily diary study where they responded to state-leve...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public...

People’s diets can serve as a basis for social identity, and the papers in this special issue examine the social psychological implications of vegetarianism as a social identity. The papers run the gamut from examining how vegetarians are viewed by the omnivorous majority to examining interventions designed to reduce meat consumption. In this paper...

The included studies examined the relationship between climate change mitigation behavior (CCB) and personality. In Study 1, 1089 US collegians completed a measure of the Big Five and indicated how often they engaged in five CCBs. Engaging in each CCB was regressed on the Big Five. These analyses found openness was positively related to all five CC...

A growing body of research has focused on distinguishing general forms of gratitude from gratitude to God. We contributed to this area of research by examining correlates of personality traits and meaning in life in a cross-sectional study (N = 1,398). General gratitude was more strongly positively related to honesty-humility, extraversion, conscie...

Prayer is an important aspect of many people's daily lives, yet little is known about the relationships between prayer and daily experiences and well-being in ecologically valid settings. In three studies, participants (N = 350) completed questionnaires once a day for 2 weeks (4,437 daily reports) regarding the events they experienced each day, the...

In studies conducted in the US and Poland, vegans, non-vegan vegetarians, pescatarians, and omnivores described how they perceived they were treated by others as a function of their diet. We found that vegans thought that others treated them more negatively because of their diets than vegetarians or pescatarians did, and pescatarians thought that o...

We examined differences in reactions to climate change as a function of belief in God. We studied four samples, convenience samples of university students in the USA ( n = 627) and in Poland ( n = 628), a nationally representative sample of adults in Poland ( n = 1154), and a nationally representative sample of adults in the USA ( n = 1098). In eac...

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied ma...

Replacing traditional meat with meat substitutes may reduce environmental degradation and improve people’s health. We discuss two categories of meat substitutes; plant-based meat alternatives (PBMA) and cultured meat (CM). Despite their benefits, some people may not accept these foods. Neither PBMA nor CM take the form of a solid piece of meat (e.g...

Traditionally, prosociality has been conceptualized in terms of the interpersonal domain, for example, helping behavior. Nevertheless, people can be prosocial in terms of ideological domains, for example, social policies they support. The present study examined the utility of distinguishing interpersonal and ideological prosocial values as predicto...

Analyses of the 2020 combined European and World Values Surveys (124,958 respondents from 77 countries) found that people who believed in God tended to be happier, more satisfied with lives, and healthier than non-believers. Believers trusted people close to them (e.g., neighbors) more than non-believers, although non-believers tended to trust peop...

Recent theory conceptualizes emotion regulation as occurring across three stages: (a) identifying the need to regulate, (b) selecting a strategy, and (c) implementing that strategy to modify emotions. Yet, measurement of emotion regulation has not kept pace with these theoretical advances. In particular, widely used global self-report questionnaire...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behavior change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public h...

Introduction Gratitude is commonly known as a positive emotion, but it can also be understood as a disposition—one’s inherent quality that includes being grateful for the positive aspects of one’s life and appreciating altruistic gifts. A growing body of research suggests that having a disposition of gratitude is positively related to wellbeing and...

Prosociality refers to dispositions and behaviors intended to benefit others, and the present study assumed that these dispositions reflect people's values. Much of the research on prosociality has examined prosociality in what can be called the interpersonal domain, e.g., helping others. I propose that prosociality also exists in the ideological d...

Gratitude is known to be negatively related to symptoms of depression and positively related to well-being, among many other benefits to mental health that it is associated with. Yet, most research focuses on the between-person relationships between gratitude and other constructs, while the rarely studied within-person relationships may reflect dif...

Introduction: Gratitude is known to have beneficial effects on the well-being of various populations, including women with breast cancer. The present diary study examined if daily feelings of gratitude would affect the daily functioning of women with breast cancer and if after a 2-week-long gratitude intervention they would function better than bef...

Across three studies conducted in the US and Poland, we found that vegans tended to think that others treated them more negatively because of their diet than lacto-ovo vegetarians or pescatarians. In contrast, pescatarians tended to think that other treated them less negatively than lacto-ovo vegetarians did. In one study, we found that vegans, lac...

Participants in the present study, 646 Brazilians, completed an online survey in which they indicated how they perceived plant-based meat substitutes and cultured meat, how much they knew about these products, and how willing they were to eat these products. They also described their diet, and they completed a measure of vegetarian threat. Regressi...

This article presents a new framework for understanding how people think personality changes across the life span. In two studies we examined the correspondence among how people thought their personalities would change, how people in general change, and changes found in a meta-analysis of changes in personality. We conceptualized and measured perso...

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and str...

Each day for two weeks, participants described the events that happened to them. For at least four of these events (two positive and two negative), they described its valence, how much they thought the event affected their sense of self, how it influenced how they felt in general, and how important the event was for their future. Multilevel analyse...

We examined within-person relationships among daily events, emotion regulation strategies, and well-being in daily life. Each day for 2 to 3 weeks, participants in two studies (total N = 445) reported the extent to which they reappraised and suppressed their positive and negative emotions, the types of events they experienced, and their well-being....

For 2 weeks, participants (282 US collegians) used a diary technique to describe the social interactions they had each day. These descriptions included how enjoyable the interaction was, how confident they felt, and how intimate the interaction was. They also completed a measure of Allport’s Intrinsic–Extrinsic religious orientation, the Christian...

Introduction Gratitude has been studied as a disposition that reflects the extent to which people appreciate what they have in life knowing that it has not been given to them forever. Being grateful has been found to promote quality of life, which is why it may be used to cope in difficult times including during breast cancer diagnosis and treatmen...

The Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS) is widely used as a screening measure for psychological distress. Nevertheless, there is disagreement among researchers about the extent to which the HADS provides separate measures of anxiety and depression or a single measure of affectively based distress, and the present study was designed to contribu...

In this paper we introduce a new measure of the motivation to eat new foods, the MENF. The measure is based upon the assumption that people's interest in new foods reflects a combination of two distinct motives, an approach motive and an avoidance motive. In a series of studies (ns of 703, 411, and 777; collegians and nationally representative samp...

Each day for two weeks participants described how often they had used four types of humor that day: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor. Each day, participants also described the events that occurred in their lives (positive and negative crossed with social and achievement), and they provided measures of their well-bei...

An increasing body of research suggests that emerging adults living in Western societies are becoming more individualistic and such increases in individualism are associated with reduced well-being. The present study examined relationships between well-being and individualism and collectivism among 1906 emerging adults in the US, aged 18-25. We mea...

In a series of studies conducted in the USA and Poland, we found that vegetarianism can serve as a basis for the formation of personal relationships. Consistent with research on the similarity-attraction effect, we found that vegetarians were more likely than omnivores to have friends and lovers who were vegetarians. In study 1, vegetarians reporte...

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (10–14 March, 2020) we conducted a survey (n = 1028) of a nationally representative sample (age, sex, and locale) in Poland. Respondents indicated how strong they thought the threat was to themselves, to Poland, and the world. They also described their emotional reactions to the pandemic, which we used to c...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a devastating global health crisis. Without a vaccine or effective medication, the best hope for mitigating virus transmission is collective behavior change and support for public health interventions (e.g., physical distancing, physical hygiene, and endorsement of health policies). In a large-scale international co...

Emotion regulation researchers often assume that global self-report questionnaires capture momentary emotion regulation processes that occur in everyday life; however, this assumption remains largely untested. To test this assumption, we analyzed data from 10 daily life studies (Total N = 1,198) in which participants reported their use of cognitive...

The present paper provides an overview of diary style research. This includes descriptions of different methods and the types of research questions for which they are appropriate. Data analytic methods are described and some recommendations are provided. Recommendations regarding the preparation of manuscripts describing the results of diary studie...

In the present study, clinically depressed (n = 135) and non-depressed adults (n = 138) described the events that happened to them each day for two weeks, and these descriptions were content analysed. Participants also rated how stressful and how positive each event was. Multilevel analyses found that depressed individuals, compared to the non-depr...

Objectives Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an evidence-based treatment to prevent relapse in individuals with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD). It is not clear if MBCT is an effective therapy for current depression, and it is not clear what mechanisms are responsible for the effectiveness of MBCT. Theoretically, MBCT is belie...

In a series of studies conducted in the USA and Poland, we found that vegetarianism can serve as a basis for the formation of personal relationships. Consistent with research on the similarity-attraction effect, we found that vegetarians were more likely than omnivores to have friends and lovers who were vegetarians. In study 1, vegetarians reporte...

Does one’s physical size inform the development of traits and interpersonal behavioral strategies? Drawing on resource holding potential, reactive heritability and facultative calibration, the recalibration theory of anger, and the general aggression model, we predicted that there would be positive relationships between (a) height and aggression an...

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (10-14 March, 2020) we conducted a survey (n = 1028) of a nationally representative sample (age, sex, and locale) in Poland. Respondents indicated how strong they thought the threat was to themselves, to Poland, and the world. They also described their emotional reactions to the pandemic, which we used to c...

Objectives. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has demonstrated to be successful in the reduction of relapse rates in patients with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD). Little is known if MBCT is effective for treating individuals with current MDD episode and about underlying psychophysiological mechanisms of symptoms reduction. The a...

Based on the cascading model of EI that proposes that emotion regulation is indirectly influenced by emotion perception, we compared two training approaches. We examined whether including basic abilities when training emotion regulation (mixed approach) leads to better outcomes than training emotion regulation directly (pure approach). Participants...

This paper summarizes research on relationships between personality and food choice and food consumption. Personality is one of many factors that can influence food choice and consumption and whether people make healthy choices. We used the Five Factor Model of personality as an organizing theme to summarize the research and found that in addition...

Multilevel modeling (MLM) is a statistical technique that can be used to analyze the data collected in various types of research. Although the use of and demand for MLM has increased dramatically over the past decade, instruction in MLM has not kept pace with these increases. The present paper provides an introduction to MLM that is intended to hel...

Food choice can be a way for people to express their ideals and identities. In particular, for those who identify as vegetarian, this label is more than just a set of dietary preferences. Choosing to follow a plant-based diet shapes one’s personal and social identity and is likely to influence a person’s values, attitudes, beliefs, and well-being....

Each day for two weeks participants described how often they had used four types of humor that day: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating humor. Participants also completed the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), the Coping with Humor scale (CHS), a measure of the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality, and the Rosenberg Self-es...

Presents an obituary for Ladd Wheeler (1937-2018). Wheeler was a leading researcher in what some have called the "golden age of social psychology." To those who had the good fortune of working with him, Ladd was known for his ability to separate sense from nonsense both in psychology and in life, as a supportive collaborator and mentor, and as a te...

We conducted a survey about the 2014 FIFA World Cup that measured attitudes about FIFA, players, and officials in 18 languages with 4600 respondents from 29 countries. Sixty percent of respondents perceived FIFA officials as being dishonest, and people from countries with less institutional corruption and stronger rule of law perceived FIFA officia...

Objectives. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) has demonstrated to be successful in the reduction of relapse rates in patients with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD). Little is known if MBCT is effective for treating individuals with current MDD episode and about underlying psychophysiological mechanisms of symptoms reduction. The a...

Previous research has found that omnivores are more hierarchical and more authoritarian than vegetarians. To examine if such differences extend to political behavior a sample of American undergraduates (N = 1211) described their diets, endorsement of social policies, political orientation, and voting behavior. Consistent with previous research, we...

Gratitude can be understood in two ways: as a state of being grateful for things and people, and as a disposition. Research suggests that focusing on reasons for being grateful promotes various aspects of well-being. The present study examined the effectiveness of a gratitude intervention for women with breast cancer. Each day for 2 weeks, 42 women...

Objective To examine the self‐presentational motives underlying people's selection of their daily dress and relationships between these motives and public self‐consciousness. Method Participants in this study, 61 working adults, described their motives for choosing what they wore each day for 2 weeks. They also provided trait level measures of sel...

Each day for 2 weeks, participants (N = 131, psychologically healthy adults residing in the community) described their daily well-being, how grateful they felt that day, and the events they experienced. Multilevel modeling analyses found that daily feelings of gratitude were positively related to well-being at the within-person level. The analyses...

Participants in the study were 404 recreational runners. At the end of each week for three months they used an online diary to describe their psychological well-being for the week (a total of 4046 weeks), and they indicated if they had participated in an organized race each week (a total of 1111 races). Multilevel modeling analyses (weeks nested wi...

Although food neophobia is a widely researched individual difference, little is known about relationships between food neophobia and personality. Participants in the present study (716 undergraduates) completed measures of the Five Factor Model of personality and food neophobia. A factor analysis suggested that food neophobia consisted of two facto...

The present study examined relationships between attention to negative words and daily rumination and daily adjustment in a sample of clinically depressed individuals. We recorded eye movements of 43 individuals diagnosed with major depression while they were freely viewing dysphoric, threat-related, neutral, and positive words. Then, each day for...

The goal of the present study was to examine differences in the daily experiences of vegetarians and non-vegetarians. At the end of each day for two weeks, a convenience sample of American undergraduates described how they felt and how they thought about themselves that day, and they described the events that occurred to them that day. Multilevel m...

Objective: The present study examined the effectiveness of online positive attention bias modification training (ABMT) in inducing positive attention and positive interpretational biases in depressed individuals. Method: Clinically depressed individuals (n = 60) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions of 14-day online ABMT. In the positi...

Participants in the study were recreational runners (N = 244) who maintained online diaries. Once a week for approximately 3 months they indicated how far they had run each day that week, and at the end of the week, they provided measures of their psychological well-being. A series of multilevel modeling analyses (weeks nested within persons) found...

That is introduction to special issue of the Polish Psychological Bulletin, which is is devoted to well-being (WB) considered within the context of an integrated approach to personality. We believe the articles in this special issue increase our understanding of well-being in two ways. First, they provide new knowledge about the functions of eudaim...

Participants in the study were recreational runners who completed measures of their orientation to exercise, the Five Factor Model of personality, self-efficacy as a specific adaptation (a socio-cognitive construct of personality) and measures of subjective well-being (life satisfaction) and eudaimonic well-being (life engagement). Consistent with...

Objective: Research on searching for meaning in life has focused on trait level relationships rather than within-person relationships. Our goal was to examine within-person relationships between daily states of searching for meaning in life, daily states of presence of meaning in life, and daily states of well-being. Method: To advance our under...

Participants in the present study (82 high school students and 60 seniors) used a version of the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) to describe their past (10 years ago), present, and future (10 years from the present) selves. From the TIPI we derived measures of positive and negative self-evaluation. We analyzed these data with 2 (young-old) x...

This study investigated whether vegetarians and omnivores differ in their personality characteristics. We measured the five factor model of personality and depressive symptoms in vegetarians, who avoided meat and fish (n = 276); semi-vegetarians, who ate some meat and/or fish (n = 1191); and omnivores (n = 4955). Although vegetarians and semi-veget...

Aim: The present study was designed to examine relationships between young people’s self-concepts and their perceptions of their futures Methods: High school students (n = 347) completed measures of the two domains of self concept, the evaluative domain, self-esteem, and the knowledge or structural domain, self-concept clarity. They also completed...

The present study replicates previous research demonstrating that daily positive events can buffer the effects of daily stress on well-being. The present study differs from previous research in two ways. First, we examined buffering effects among a sample of adults residing in the community. Previous research studied student samples. Second, we mea...

The present study moved beyond trait reports of rumination, reflection, and meaning in life (presence and search) by examining within-person relationships between daily states of these constructs and well-being. Participants (N = 130) completed reports at the end of the day for 14 days. When analyzed together, daily rumination was negatively relate...