Peter Halama

Slovak Academy of Sciences | SAV · Institute of Experimental Psychology

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals w...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals—fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care—might have b...

The aim of the study was to make COVID-19 unfounded beliefs, including conspiracy and pseudoscientific beliefs. The first phase of the research consisted of collecting COVID-19 unfounded beliefs, resulting in 25 items. The resulting set of items was administered in the first collection to 584 respondents. Psychometric analysis of the data, through...

The paper is focused on the dark tetrad traits as predictors of the tendency to accept conspiracy beliefs , including conspiracies related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on the assumption that the dark tetrad can increase the inclination of conspiracy beliefs, especially by reducing trust in other people. The survey involved 720 respondents...

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives—self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and...

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles’. There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national explor...

Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in th...

Acquiescence is a tendency to systematically agree with all items without regard to their content. It is questionable whether acquiescence is consistent across different domains and methods (e.g. Danner & Rammstedt, 2016). The goal of this study was to investigate the possible consistency or specificity of domains and methods. The sample consists o...

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investiga...

Purpose: This study is a qualitative inquiry into meaning making during retirement transition. The study focuses on how Slovak retirees reconstruct meanings during the transition and the factors which both help and hinder this process. Methods: Forty individuals (M = 63.36; SD = 2.47) who had recently transitioned into retirement were interviewed a...

Introduction Food decisions and dietary preferences are affected by a complex set of different cultural or regional factors, but personality traits seem to play an important role too. Previous research suggested that the food preferences related to veganism, vegetarianism, or carnism can be predicted by the Big Five model of personality and reflect...

The aim of this pilot study was to test the effectiveness of an educational forgiveness intervention on mental health in grieving parents. 21 grieving parents were randomly assigned to the experimental group (in which the educational forgiveness intervention occurred) and to the control group (in which a psycho-education grief intervention with a h...

The present research focuses on the question whether spirituality, religiosity and maladaptive personality traits, as measured by the PID-5 (antagonism, psychoticism, disinhibition, negative affectivity, detachment), predict epistemologically unfounded beliefs (conspiracies, pseudo-science and paranormal beliefs). The sample included 829 participan...

This study explores the effect of Big Five personality traits on behavioral and emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality traits of 248 Slovak persons were assessed twice before the pandemic using the Big Five Inventory 2. Behavioral and emotional responses to the pandemic were collected during the first and second pandemic wave (Ap...

The aim of this study was to qualitatively explore the adjustment to retirement transition from the point of view of recently retired Slovak individuals. The special focus of the study was on factors which helped or blocked the process of this adjustment. The data obtained from semi-structured interviews were analyzed by Consensual Qualitative Rese...

This study explores the effect of Big Five personality traits on behavioral and emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Personality traits of 248 Slovak persons were assessed twice before the pandemic using the Big Five Inventory 2. Behavioral and emotional responses to the pandemic were collected during the first and second pandemic wave (Ap...

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...

Abstract What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or “WEIRD” measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or “independent”), high-arousal emotion. However, research from East�ern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an in...

What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or “WEIRD” measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or “independent”), high-arousal emotion. However, research from Eastern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an interpersona...

The current study focuses on exploring the 6-month test-retest stability of the Slovak second version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI-2) and its predictive power for subjective and psychological well-being, on value-fo-cused behavior and everyday behavior. The sample consisted of 414 adult Slovak participants, who reported on their personalities usi...

The retirement literature contains four distinct conceptualizations of retirement lifestyle. Retirement can be seen as an opportunity to make a new start, the continuation of a pre-retirement lifestyle, an unwelcome imposed disruption, and a transition to old age. This research examines the conceptualizations of retirement lifestyle and how they re...

Objective The current exploratory study sought to examine dispositional optimism, or the general expectation for positive outcomes, around the world. Method Dispositional optimism and possible correlates were assessed across 61 countries (N = 15,185; mean age = 21.92; 77% female). Mean‐level differences in optimism were computed along with their r...

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower stat...

Cieľom príspevku je poukázať na osobnostné zdroje epistemologicko nepodložených presvedčení (ENP), ktoré majú negatívny dosah ako na jednotlivcov tak aj na spoločnosť. Výskum sa zameriava na osobnostné črty temná triáda: narcizmus, psychopatia a machiavelizmus, a ich súvis s pseudovedeckými, paranormálnymi a konšpiračnými presvedčeniami. Výskumný s...

Online supplementary material for paper: Slovak Adaptation of the Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Psychometric Properties and Initial Validation

The article describes the process of adaptation of the Big Five Inventory-2 into the Slovak language and cultural context. The translation process of the Slovak BFI-2 was based on three data samples using item analysis and basic psychometric properties. The present study estimates the psychometric properties of the Slovak BFI-2 and its hierarchical...

The aim of this study was to focus on the relationship of forgiveness toward others, self-forgiveness, and anger toward God after the loss of a child. A sample of 84 grieving parents completed a battery of questionnaires. Self-forgiveness was found to be the strongest predictor of avoiding negative psychological adjustment after the loss (defined b...

Príspevok sa zameriava na odlišné fungovanie položiek (DIF) v Inventári veľkej päťky BFI-2 medzi obyvateľmi miest a obcí. Výskumný súbor tvorilo 1048 respondentov, 396 (37,8%) obyvateľov obcí a 652 (62,2%) obyvateľov miest. Priemerný vek bol 41,12 (SD= 13,95). DIF bolo analyzované prostredníctvom iteratívnej hybridnej ordinálnej logistickej regresi...

The current project measures personality across cultures, for the first time using a forced-choice (or idiographic) assessment instrument - the California Adult Q-set (CAQ). Correlations among the average personality profiles across 13 countries (total N = 2,370) ranged from r = .69 to r = .98. The most similar averaged personality profiles were be...

Objectives. Presence of differential item functioning (DIF) in psychological measurement tools can indicate the presence of bias between groups. The present study is focused on analysing DIF between males and females in the Slovak version of NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). Sample and settings. The sample consists of 1016 respondents (40,6% mal...

The latent structure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been widely discussed, with the majority of studies in this area being conducted in the US. The current study aimed to extend this area of research by comparing seven existing PTSD factor models in a sample of 754 trauma-exposed university students from Slovakia, where similar researc...

The study focuses on the regulation of negative emotions in the decision-making process of nurses. The aim of our qualitative research was to understand and describe which situations the nurses perceive as the most negative and which negative emotions they feel in these situations. We also investigated how nurses perceive the influence of negative...

Ciele. Odlišné fungovanie položiek (DIF) možno skúmať prostredníctvom viacerých metód založených na klasickej teórii testov ako aj teórii odpovede na položku. Štúdia je zameraná na porovnanie identifikovaných odlišne fungujúcich položiek skupín mužov a žien, resp. konzistenciu výsledkov Mantel-Haenszelovej procedúry, logistickej regresie a metódy S...

Objectives: In our research we focused on the possibility of the change in the attachment of the addicts who are in the process of in-patient or out-patient addiction treatment. Several research outcomes support the assumption that there is a possibility of change in the individual features of the attachment, mainly due to the corrective experience...

The study focuses on the relationship between self-regulation and decision making of Slovak managers in work-related situations involving routine circumstances and circumstances where inappropriate decision may lead to possible serious negative consequences. 143 Slovak managers were asked to choose some work-related situation of decision making and...

While a large body of research has investigated cultural differences in behavior, the typical study assesses a single behavioral outcome, in a single context, compared across two countries. The current study compared a broad array of behaviors across 21 countries (N=5,522). Participants described their behavior at 7:00 p.m. the previous evening usi...

Abstrakt Štúdia sa zaoberá uniformným odlišným fungovaním položiek (DIF) medzi obyvateľmi obcí a menších miest (do 20 tisíc obyvateľov) a obyvateľmi väčších miest (nad 20 tisíc obyvateľov) v slovenskej verzii revidovaného Eysenckovho osobnostného dotazníka (EPQ-R). Uniformné DIF nastáva, keď má jedna zo skupín respondentov vyššiu pravdepodobnosť kľ...

Štúdia sa zaoberá odlišným fungovaním položiek medzi obyvateľmi miest a obcí vo verbálnych subtestoch Slovenskej verzie Testu štruktúry inteligencie IS -T 2000 R (Amthauer et al., v tlači). K odlišnému fungovaniu položky dochádza v prípade, že položka zvýhodňuje alebo znevýhodňuje členov jednej skupiny napriek rovnakej miere meranej vlastnosti. Výs...

On behalf of the International Test Commission and the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations a world-wide survey on the opinions of professional psychologists on testing practices was carried out. The main objective of this study was to collect data for a better understanding of the state of psychological testing worldwide. These data...

Objective: The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Method: 5447 members of college communities in 20 countries, recruited by local collaborators, provided data via a website in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Qsort (RSQ), participants described the sit...

The study explores the relationships between decision-making styles in hospital nurses and their attachment styles in adulthood as well as the possible mediation of these associations by self-regulation. It is based on the assumption that attachment styles, defined as mental working models of self and others, affect the decision-making process in n...

The study focused on the gender differential item functioning in Slovak version of the Intelligence Structure Test 2000 - Revised (Amthauer et al., 2011). The sample included 744 middle and high school students with mean age of 16.94 years. The non-parametric method SIBTEST for identification of items with differential functioning was used in order...

The chapter focuses on one of the most discussed topics in psychology of religion - religious conversion. It provides a review of psychological concepts related to religious conversion and defines religious conversion as a positive change in religious beliefs including significant changes in spiritual and personal life. It gives a review of psychol...

The commentary on the paper by M. Filipiak et al. emphasizes that psychological assessment in a broad sense is an inevitable part of psychologists' occupation regardless of whether or not psychological tests are used. Also, competence in the area of psychological assessment is not independent of competence in specific areas of psychological practic...

For many years the problem of meaning in life has been a central part of several scientific disciplines, especially philosophy or theology. Several decades ago, psychology also started to study this phenomenon. It was particularly stimulated by practicing psychologists and psychiatrists who recognized the importance of meaning in the lives of their...

The chapter presents theoretical concepts and research findings related to relationship between stress and meaning in life. Author reviews theories of coping stress resistance which included meaning in their models, as sense of coherence (SOC) of Antonovsky, hardiness of Maddi and Kobasa, as well as theories based on congruence and meaning in life...

This study attempts to derive the empirically based typology of religious conversion by means of cluster analysis. The research sample consisted of 179 participants who defined themselves as converts. The participants were administered the Religious Conversion Process Questionnaire (RCPQ), which contains 50 items reflecting dominant aspects and the...

BACKGROUND: The study draws on the current concept of attachment, which considers personal attachment as an important factor in adult behaviour and experiencing, especially in relation to interpersonal relationships and risky behaviour. AIMS: The aim of the study was to identify relationships between attachment and the risky use of alcohol and ille...

The study is focused on the question how the need for structure and the Big Five personality traits predict decision making styles in health professionals. The sample included 225 health care professionals from different areas (physicians, nurses, paramedics, emergency link operators). Need for structure was measured by Personal Need for Structure...

Objectives. The goal of the study was to analyse the relationship between perceived stress and life meaningfulness in two samples: young adults and the elderly, and to analyse moderation role of the personality traits in this relationship. Sample and setting. The research sample included two subsamples: 303 young adults with mean age 21,56 years an...

The study is based on the assumption that the attachment system is closely related to religiosity and religious behavior. Previous research showed that a type of attachment was related to religious conversion. Insecure attachment was related to sudden and emotional conversion and secure attachment was related to gradual adoption of caregiver's reli...

The aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between affect regulation styles and decision making in health-care professionals. The authors suppose that emotions and affect regulation are closely connected with decision making in professional situations. 133 health-care professionals participated in the study which employed Melbourne De...

Background An inverse relationship between religiosity and adolescent health-related behaviour has been repeatedly documented, but evidence regarding gender is scarce. The aim of this study was to assess the association between a wide range of adolescent health-related behaviours and religiosity as well as gender differences in these associations....

The main goal of the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations (EFPA) Standing Committee on Tests and Testing (SCTT) is the improvement of testing practices in European countries. In order to reach this goal, the SCTT carries out various actions and projects, some of which are described in this paper. To better inform its work, it decided...

The study analyzes and compares the validity of computerized adaptive testing, paper and pencil and computer-based forms of cognitive abilities tests. The research was conducted on a sample of 803 secondary school students (567 paper and pencil, 236 computer-based/computerized adaptive administration; 363 males, 440 females), their mean age was 16....

The purpose of the presented study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Slovak version of the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (JTCI), which is based on Cloninger's biosocial model of personality. Data collected from 611 children aged 10-16 years from the control population and 141 inpatients from the same age group were us...

This study focuses on how converts and their close acquaintances perceive changes in personality characteristics after religious conversion and possible demographic influences of these perceptions. Sixty Slovakian respondents self-defined as having experienced conversions rated themselves twice on measures of Big Five personality traits, self-estee...

The study analyzes the problem whether locus of control and self-esteem can explain the unique variance in predicting sensitivity to injustice not explained by personality traits and whether personality traits interact with self-esteem and locus of control when predicting sensitivity to injustice. The research was conducted on the Slovak sample of...

Measurement of psychotherapy change: Comparison of classical test score and IRT based score P Halama, M. Biescad Objectives. The present study focuses on the problem of sensitivity to change as an important issue in evaluating the quality of measures focusing on psychotherapy change. It deals with the question on the problem how a psychometric appr...

The study deals with the relationship between religiosity and different aspects of well- being in samples of Slovak and Hungarian university students and raises the question of whether this relationship is moderated by personality traits. Francis Scale of Attitude towards Christianity, Diener's Satisfaction with Life Scale, Oxford Happiness Questio...

The paper focuses on the question whether hope mediates the effect of personality traits on life satisfaction. It is based on the assumption that the cognitive ability to perceive the possibility of reaching one's own personal goals is an important outcome of personality traits as well as a strong predictor of life satisfaction The research sample...

The paper focuses on the measurement of the growth which follows stress experience. It shortly describes the most used methods in this area and it analyzes psychometric characteristics of the Slovak version of Stress-Related Growth Scale (Park, Cohen, Murch, 1996). Sample of 315 university students was used to analyze descriptive indicators of the...

The study focuses on the relationship of selected existential and spiritual variables with mental health. This relationship was examined in two subsamples. The normal population included 201 university students (54 males, 147 females) from the Jessenius Medical Faculty, Comenius University, Martin, Slovakia. Sub-sample of psychiatric patients consi...

There is growing evidence that spirituality and its components (meaning of life, hope, relation to other people/nature/higher power or God) are important correlates of mental health. The Aim of our work was to assess spirituality and its components in psychiatric patients compared to healthy population. The study sample consisted of 124 patients ho...

The study focuses on the question of whether the level of meaning in life acts as a moderator in the relationship between perceived stress and coping. The 204 university students in Slovakia (mean age 21.81 years) filled out the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983), Life Meaningfulness Scale (Halama, 2002) and COPE (Carver et al., 1989). Clu...

The contribution presents results of confirmatory factor analysis of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) among Slovak subjects. The sample consisted of 920 high school and university students (365 males, 555 females). Using LISREL software, eight different models of factor structure were estimated. Models were formulated on the basis of previous...

The study examines the question whether meaning in life and hope can explain unique variance of positive mental health not predicted by personality traits. The sample consisted of 148 adolescents (73 males, 75 females) ranging in age from 16 to 19 years - mean age 16.84. NEO-FFI was used to measure the big five traits, Halama's Life Meaningfulness...

Psychometric analysis of Rosenberg's self-esteem scale was conducted on the sample of 591 adolescents (234 males, 357 females, mean age 18,77 years). Both classical test theory and item response theory methods were used to evaluate psychometric properties of the scale and its items. Similarly to several previous researches, factor analysis revealed...

The study deals with a religious conversion of members of the Catholic Charismatic movement. This movement is characterised by the integration of those aspects of spirituality, which draw on traditional religious life as well as on the spirituality of new religious movements. The consensual qualitative research was used for analyses of thirty stori...

The questionnaire NEO-FFI was correlated with two different meaningfulness measures: Reker's Personal Meaning Index (PMI) and Halama's Life Meaningfulness Scale (LMS). NEO-FFI and PMI were administered to two groups of subjects: university students (N = 82, mean age 21.13) and elderly people (N = 107, mean age 62.20), and NEO-FFI together with LMS...

A phenomenon of religious conversion is analysed from the view of psychology of religion. The review of older opinions about conversion (especially W. James, E. Starbuck) is supplemented by the more recent approaches stressing such factors as attachment style, coping processes, social influence as well as conscious activity of the individual in sea...

The paper deals with the nature of intelligence related to the existential and spiritual dimension of individuals. Authors' considerations are introduced by a review of approach to intelligence in the spiritual area postulated by H. Gardner who suggests it be included under the designation existential intelligence. They further outline relations be...

Both psychologists of religion and psychologists dealing with meaning in life confirm interaction between religiosity and life meaningfulness. This study deals with the question of which dimensions or aspects of religion are related to a sense of life meaningfulness. 104 students of Catholic grammar schools (aged 17 to 19) were given a set of quest...

The collaborative role of life meaning and hope in positive human functioning is investigated. The research sample consisted of 94 persons in late adulthood (50-79). Reker's Personal Meaning Index (PMI) was used for measuring life meaningfulness and Snyder's Hope Scale for measuring the level of hope. As indicators of mental functioning use was mad...

The paper presents the first experience with newly developed scale concerning life meaningfulness. The scale is based on the three-component model of personal meaning (Reker, Wong, 1988), which consider three basic aspects of life meaningfulness: the cognitive (beliefs, cognitive schemas, interpretations), the motivational (commitment to goals, val...

Meaning in life is generally considered as a multidimensional phenomenon. Reker and Wong's model of personal meaning postulates three components: cognitive, motivational and affective. In the present study, the interrelations between these components are analyzed on a sample of 168 university students. Personal Meaning Index (PMI) and dimension Fra...

The problem of conscience has been discussed in psychology mainly in the frame of psychology of personality and psychology of religion. The paper presents V. E. Frankl's original approach to this problem, which links together both these psychology areas. His own conception of man's personality, called existential analysis, emphasizes "will to meani...

Author describes the process of an adaptation of the Slovak version of the Snyder's Hope Scale. At the beginning, the three types of psychological concepts of hope are presented: the emotional, the existential and the cognitive ones. The Snyder's understanding of hope represents the cognitive concepts. Snyder considers hope as a cognitive set conta...

In the study the relationship of meaning in life and the preference of coping strategies in late adolescence is examined. Three meaning dimensions were measured: intensity, a level at which the individual perceives that his/her life has meaning and purpose; the breadth, a number of sources, which the individual derives meaning from (a number of dif...