Martin Kanovsky

Comenius University Bratislava · Institute of Social Anthropology

Wisdom is the hallmark of social judgment, but how people across cultures recognize wisdom remains unclear—distinct philosophical traditions suggest different views of wisdom’s cardinal features. We explore perception of wise minds across 16 socio-economically and culturally diverse convenience samples from 12 countries. Participants assessed wisdo...

Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the influence of stakes on ordinary knowledge ascriptions has been divided along methodological lines: “evidence‐fixed” prompts rarely find stakes effects,...

We investigated the universality versus cultural specificity of preferences for internal decision-making strategies (intuition or deliberation) over external strategies (advice from friends or crowds). Participants from diverse samples spanning five continents (N=3,517), including Indigenous communities, were presented with scenarios involving choo...

Introduction Although there have been several attempts at improving the COPE Inventory, the factor structure of the instrument is still in dispute. In addition, studies have shown low reliability coefficients for some of the first-order factors, with Mental Disengagement having the lowest factor loadings. In a recent study on the external validatio...

The goal of this study was to identify differences between high and low self-critical participants in relation to compassionate facial expressions. Our convenience sample consisted of 151 participants aged 18-59 years old (M = 25.17; SD = 7.81). The highest and the lowest scoring participants in self-criticism were selected for final analysis (N =...

Introduction As self-rating scales are prone to many measurement distortions, there is a growing call for more objective measures based on physiological or behavioural indicators. Self-criticism is one of the major transdiagnostic factor of all mental disorders therefore it is important to be able to distinguish what are the characteristic facial f...

The concept of wisdom has captivated scholars throughout history, yet disagreements remain over its cultural variability. Here, we investigated wisdom perception in self and others across 16 samples from eight cultural regions on five continents. Participants assessed wisdom exemplars, non-exemplar targets, and themselves on 19 socio-cognitive char...

During large-scale disasters, social support, caring behaviours, and compassion are shown to protect against poor mental health outcomes. This multi-national study aimed to assess the fluctuations in compassion over time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents (Time 1 n = 4156, Time 2 n = 980, Time 3 n = 825) from 23 countries completed online se...

Objectives The COVID-19 pandemic is having an unprecedented detrimental impact on mental health in people around the world. It is important therefore to explore factors that may buffer or accentuate the risk of mental health problems in this context. Given that compassion has numerous benefits for mental health, emotion regulation, and social rel...

There is no previous research exploring the relationship between self-criticism and pupillary reactivity. Biomarkers such as pupillary reactivity inform about the quantity of the information being processed. Potentially, they can improve predictions of self-criticism levels and identification of pathological levels of self-criticism. The goal of ou...

Thus far, there has been no face in the crowd research that also considers the level of self-criticism. This is despite the fact that self-criticism is the key underlying factor in psychopathology and that having objective criteria to diagnose it would be highly beneficial. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to explore fixation duration on...

The COPE Inventory (Carver et al., 1989) is the most frequently used measure of coping; yet previous studies examining its factor structure yielded mixed results. The purpose of the current study, therefore, was to validate the factor structure of the COPE Inventory in a representative sample of over 2,000 adults in Slovakia. Our second goal was to...

Whether the Anger Superiority Effect prevails over the Happiness Superiority Effect has been the subject of much discussion. Problems with the research design and methodology used in this type of research could account for differences in the results. This face-in-the-crowd study attempted a more ecologically valid design using nine multiplied ident...

Background Historically social connection has been an important way through which humans have coped with large-scale threatening events. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns have deprived people of major sources of social support and coping, with others representing threats. Hence, a major stressor during the pandemic has been a sense...

Without a reliable and valid instrument of compassion and self-compassion, it is hard to conduct quality research in compassion even though it is a rapidly growing area of interest in many scientific fields. However, recently the Sussex-Oxford Compassion Scales (SOCS; Gu et al., 2020) were developed, with two parallel versions for compassion (SCOS-...

It is widely held that intuitive dualism—an implicit default mode of thought that takes minds to be separable from bodies and capable of independent existence—is a human universal. Among the findings taken to support universal intuitive dualism is a pattern of evidence in which “psychological” traits (knowledge, desires) are judged more likely to c...

The purpose of this study was to examine the measurement invariance of the Self-Compassion Scale by IRT differential test functioning in ten distinct populations (n = 13623 participants) from ten different countries: Australia (n = 517), China (n = 321), Czech Republic (n = 5081), Germany (n = 2510), Italy (n = 384), Portugal (n = 512), Slovakia (n...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a massive global health crisis with damaging consequences to mental health and social relationships. Exploring factors that may heighten or buffer the risk of mental health problems in this context is thus critical. Whilst compassion may be a protective factor, in contrast fears of compassion increase vulnerabi...

The Emotion Focused Training for Self-Compassion and Self-Protection (EFT-SCP) is an intervention developed to increase skills of self-compassion and protective anger with the aim to decrease self-criticism. This novel intervention was developed on the basis of the latest findings on self-criticism from Emotion-focused therapy and previous programs...

The aim of this study was to test the multilevel multidimensional finite mixture item response model of the Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking and Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS) to cluster respondents and countries from 13 samples ( N = 7,714) and from 12 countries. The practical goal was to learn how many discrete classes there are on the level of...

In this exploratory research study, we developed an instrument to investigate people’s confidence in safeguarding measures [Confidence in Safeguards Scale (CSS)] and we adapted an instrument measuring perceived risk of coronavirus [perceived risk of coronavirus scale (PRCS)] that was originally based on a perceived risk of HIV measure. We then expl...

Decades of research conducted in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, & Democratic (WEIRD) societies have led many scholars to conclude that the use of mental states in moral judgment is a human cognitive universal, perhaps an adaptive strategy for selecting optimal social partners from a large pool of candidates. However, recent work from a mo...

Compassion Mind Training (CMT) is a therapeutic approach to guide highly self-critical individuals to generate compassion. The goal was to probe the efficacy of a short-term, online version of the CMT on self-compassion and self-criticism in a non-clinical population. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with pre-, post-measurements and two-m...

In this study, different factor analysis models were employed to test the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) in 11 distinct populations (n = 15,266) in different countries. The results strongly suggest that the most appropriate use of the SCS is to measure levels of Self-Compassionate responding (positive items) and Self-Uncompassionate responding (negati...

Under the Second Demographic Transition, alternative forms of living arrangement are on the rise. The aim of this article is to compare quality of life in children living in married and cohabiting families. We present the results of representative research conducted in Slovakia in 2018 (N = 1,010 respondents). We tested whether children brought up...

The aim of the study was to describe the spontaneous facial expressions elicited by viewers of a compassionate video in terms of the respondents’ muscular activity of single facial action units (AUs). We recruited a convenience sample of 111 undergraduate psychology students, aged 18-25 years (M = 20.53; SD = 1.62) to watch (at home alone) a short...

Objectives. The Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program is an empirically-developed group intervention aimed to cultivate self-compassion. Sample and setting. A randomized control trial was conducted with pre-, post-measurements, and two-month follow-up. A total of 122 participants were recruited from a general community by convenience sampling. They...

The purpose of this study was to examine the measurement invariance of the Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS) in terms of Item Response Theory differential test functioning in thirteen distinct samples (N = 7714) from twelve different countries. We assessed differential test functioning for the three FSCRS subscales...

Objective Our goal was to investigate the heart rate variability differences among participants with different levels of self-criticism during exposure to self-critical, self-protective, and self-compassionate guided imagery. Methods Convenience sample of 89 psychology students was collected with the provision of course credits. The participants u...

The study analyzes the relationship between level of self-criticism and success in recognizing six primary emotions and neutral emotion in photographs from the Umeå University Database of Facial Expressions. The 134 participants were recruited from the general community using availability criteria. They completed the Forms of Self-Criticising/Attac...

Emotion Focused Training for Self-Compassion and Self-Protection (EFT-SCP) is a novel intervention developed on the basis of the latest findings on self-criticism from Emotion-focused therapy and existing programs designed to cultivate compassion. EFT-SCP is designed to encourage participants to cultivate self-compassion and protective anger as a w...

The study explores the relation between participants’ level of self-criticism, self-reassurance, and eye gaze when looking at photographs of primary emotions. Participants completed The Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS) and then a facial-emotion expression task while their eye movements were being recorded by an ey...

Emotion-Focused Training for Emotion Coaching (EFT-EC) is based on Emotion-focused Therapy findings and was developed to help participants deepen their emotional skills. The goal was to examine the efficacy of a 12-week EFT-EC group program the level of emotion intelligence, self-compassion and self-criticism in a student population. A quasi-experi...

There is considerable evidence that self-criticism plays a major role in the vulnerability to and recovery from psychopathology. Methods to measure this process, and its change over time, are therefore important for research in psychopathology and well-being. This study examined the factor structure of a widely used measure, the Forms of Self-Criti...

Our goal was to investigate the efficacy of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention (MBI) in the form of a short-term, online intervention using exercises from Mindfulness-Based Stress-Reduction program on self-compassion, self-reassurance and self-criticism in a non-clinical population. We conducted pre-, post- and two-month follow-up measures of self-co...

Severe self-criticism is one of the underlying psychological factors which most influence susceptibility to psychopathology and its persistence. This study verifies the psychometric features and factor structure of the Slovak version of the Levels of Self-Criticism Scale. It entails the use of descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, validity an...

The study verifies the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the Self-Compassion and Self-Criticism Scales (SCCS) using item response theory, factor analysis, and scale validity. The survey sample was collected by convenience sampling and consisted of 514 participants (27% men and 73% women) with a mean age of 26.16 years (SD = 8.32). A...

The paper deals with the research effectivity of Slovak public universities during ten years period (2008 – 2017). Through non-parametric analysis of trends and mixed-effects model with multivariate t-distribution, trends and differences are analysed in detail. The analytical calculations are focused on properly idetifying both monotonic trends and...

The full-text of the article is available here https://rdcu.be/WX1o There is considerable evidence that self-criticism plays a major role in the vulnerability to and recovery from psychopathology. Methods to measure this process, and its change over time, are therefore important for research in psychopathology and wellbeing. This study examined th...

The authors report the development and robust evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Sense of Community Descriptors Scale, which, as one of the few scales that measures the psychological sense of community regardless of context, can be utilized in all kinds of communities for assessing community intervention effectiveness. The Sense of Co...

This article concerns the proposal and testing of a Slovak version of the Ideological Consistency Scale, which is a 10-item scale originally developed by the Pew Research Centre (2017). Its psychometric properties are investigated on a Slovak sample (N = 101). Its fit to the Rasch model with conditional maximum likelihood is tested. The Slovak vers...

The present study verifies the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the Self-Compassion Scale through item response theory, factor-analysis, validity analyses and norm development. The surveyed sample consisted of 1,181 participants (34% men and 66% women) with a mean age of 30.30 years (SD = 12.40). Two general factors (Self-compassion...

Abstract: An important goal in evaluating customer satisfaction with pharmaceutical care is to use reliable and valid instruments. The objective of the study is to validate already developed questionnaire for measuring satisfaction with pharmaceutical care by robust statistical methods, assess its factorial composition, and analyze its psychometric...

1. Objectives The study verifies the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the The Forms of Self-criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS) through item response theory, IRT factor analysis, the validity of the scale and the development of norms. 2. Sample and setting The survey sample consisted of 1,181 participants (34% me...

Objectives. The study verifies the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the The Forms of Self-criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS) through item response theory, IRT factor analysis, the validity of the scale and the development of norms. Sample and setting. The survey sample consisted of 1,181 participants (34% men and...

Significance It is widely considered a universal feature of human moral psychology that reasons for actions are taken into account in most moral judgments. However, most evidence for this moral intent hypothesis comes from large-scale industrialized societies. We used a standardized methodology to test the moral intent hypothesis across eight tradi...

Our paper [1] compared two competing hypotheses. The hypothesis that we label universalistic moral evaluation holds that a definitional feature of reasoning about moral rules is that, ceteris paribus, judgements of violations of rules concerning harm, rights or justice will be insensitive to spatial or temporal distance or the opinions of authority...

Priming with religious concepts is known to have a positive effect on prosocial behavior, however the effects of religious primes associated with outgroups remain unknown. To explore this, we conducted a field experiment in a multi-cultural, multi-religious setting (the island of Mauritius). Our design used naturally occurring, ecologically relevan...

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pa...

Research in hierarchy of children’s peer groups, mainly inspired by ethology, analyzes a number of ways of hierarchical organization. To assess whether the relationships of dominance in the group are arranged linearly or not, can be derived by indexing observed dyadic expressions of competitive interactions with the interaction winners. The study a...

The aim of this article is to assess empirically the various ways that preschool children in their peer groups create, maintain and reproduce their social relations, how they represent them and how hierarchical social structure in children's peer groups is maintained and represented. The dependent variable is linear hierarchical rank based on parti...

The aim of this article is to explore the various ways in which people represent social groups. The author shows that a prominent role in such processes is played by psychological essentialism. People represent some of their social identities as inherent qualities that are based on the sharing of a presumed 'essence': something unobservable, diffic...

Representations of „Ethnicity” in Western Ukraine and Eastern Slovakia: Cognitive and Social Background of the Construction of a Social Identity in Multi-ethnic and Mono-ethnic Environments. The aim of this article is (1) to review critically some influential explanations of ethnicity and nation (Gellner, Weber) showing that they are implicitly bas...

The paper gives an explanation of some ontological and epistemological commitments of a cognitive research program dealing with the social representations, which has been coined by Dan Sperber, namely of the epidemiology of representations. Social representations are described as causal chains linking together mental representations and public prod...

The aim of this article is to show that empirical evidence suggests that no particular causal process of essence acquisition is constitutive for essentialism in folksociology. Innate potential and biological inheritance, however powerful they may be for the human cognitive mind in the domain of folkbiology, are far from necessary in essentialist fo...

In this article, author tries to show that to explain ethnic identities, we need to evoke both anthropological and psychological explorations. The recent research results in cognitive psychology are provided, namely, the psychological evidence concerning the essentialist reasoning about social groups in everyday thought. Some empirical data from th...

This paper is a critical reply to an article "Is Sociology Afraid of Biology?"by Peter Sykora, published in Sociologia. (Sociologia 1999, No. 3, pp. 375-396) Author presents three main lines of objections against Sykora's views. Firstly, the author shows that most of Sykora's arguments are defective and non-conclusive ones. Secondly, although Sykor...

The aim of this article is to explore the various ways in which people represent social groups. The author shows that a prominent role in such processes is played by psychological essentialism. People represent some of their social identities as inherent qualities that are based on the sharing of a presumed ‚essence‘: something unobservable, diffi...