Theofilos Gkinopoulos

University of Warsaw | UW · Faculty of Psychology

Social media use occupies a prominent space in social sciences scholarship and beyond. However, the distinction between active and passive use of social media, although important in explaining a variety of users’ behaviors, has been overlooked in terms of its potential to predict key socially relevant outcomes like beliefs in conspiracy theories. I...

Conspiracy theories have become prominent in our society, especially for issues that are polarizing such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, individuals, and the countries they reside in differ in the extent to which they care and take measures to tackle these issues. Some countries implement strict policies and set appropriate...

Morality-broadly defined as the distinction between "right" and "wrong" ways to behave-represents one of the most important and appealing inquiries within the realm of social sciences. Past research has consistently shown that morality dominates social perception and serves regulatory functions that help individuals define their social identities,...

A plethora of research has highlighted that trust in science, political trust, and conspiracy theories are all important contributors to vaccine uptake behavior. In the current investigation, relying on data from 17 countries (N = 30,096) from the European Social Survey we examined how those who received (and wanted to receive the COVID-19 vaccine)...

In recent years, the scientific community has called for improvements in the credibility, robustness and reproducibility of research, characterized by increased interest and promotion of open and transparent research practices. While progress has been positive, there is a lack of consideration about how this approach can be embedded into undergradu...

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...

Ideal partner preferences (i.e., ratings of the desirability of attributes like attractiveness or intelligence) are the source of numerous foundational findings in the interdisciplinary literature on human mating. Recently, research on the predictive validity of ideal partner preference-matching (i.e., do people positively evaluate partners who mat...

Trust is an essential underpinning foundation of effective functioning amongst all staff in higher education. However, there is limited knowledge on the ways in which trust operates, including the extent to which it exists, is recognised, can be built, or lost. This article systematically scopes the international literature on trust amongst staff i...

COVID-19 pandemic had a profound negative impact on people’s personal and social life. In this chapter, after some conceptual clarifications, we provide insights into the effects of ostracism on people’s well-being as individuals, partners, and group members. Specifically, we explore (a) individual- and personality-based risk factors of ostracism (...

Presentation at 18th Panhellenic Conference on Psychological Research The ppt file contains only a few of the slides that were presented.

The problematic of diversity today circulates a discourse on human differences and similarities which is also taken up by actors with controversial political agendas, notably right‐wing populist and neoconservative movements. Focusing on contestation over the meaning of “diversity” by lay actors in social media, we suggest here that different const...

Political leaders tend to apologize for wrongdoings. This study focuses on a disaster that occurred on July 2018 in east Attica, Greece, where wildfires destroyed houses and left dozens of people dead. Two pilot studies and one main study were conducted testing perceptions of apology as sincere, perceived trust, positive emotional climate and parti...

Believing in conspiracy theories is a major problem, especially in the face of a pandemic, as these constitute a significant obstacle to public health policies, like the use of masks and vaccination. Indeed, during the COVID-19 pandemic, several ungrounded explanations regarding the origin of the virus or the effects of vaccinations have been risin...

Conspiracy theories concern milestone events, mobilizing various explanations. However, there is still emerging research on how conspiracy beliefs mobilize normative and nonnormative collective action, as well as political engagement and what the emotional underpinnings of such effects are. We conducted two experimental studies (Study 1, N = 301 an...

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...

In recent years, the scientific community has called for improvements in the credibility, robustness, and reproducibility of research, characterized by higher standards of scientific evidence, increased interest in open practices, and promotion of transparency. While progress has been positive, there is a lack of consideration about how this approa...

Research on political apologies spans sociopolitical contexts and disciplines and methodological frameworks. In the rise of interest in political apologies, especially in light of 'the age of apologies', social psychologists strive to understand mechanisms of issuing, perception and evaluation of political apologies from many perspectives. This spe...

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...

In this paper, we delineate the connection between history, social identity and populism, applying to populist leadership. We develop an argument of the use of history by populist leaders to politically mobilize and manage of social identities. We draw on social identity approach and its connection with populism. We introduce history as a political...

A correlational study (N=895) examined the association between ostracism and endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, the mediating role of sense of vulnerability, self-uncertainty and collective narcissism and the moderating role of conspiracy mentality. We found that ostracism positively predicted endorsement of COVID-19 conspiracy theories a...

A few studies have examined endorsement of conspiracy beliefs in cohorts of future teachers. We aimed to compare endorsement of conspiracy beliefs in future teachers, as well as the teachers’ beliefs about their students’ conspiracy beliefs in three countries. We recruited 1118 students in England, Greece and France, trained to become middle school...

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...

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals' well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime , it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled...

Conspiracy beliefs constitute a propensity to attribute major events to powerful agents acting against less powerful “victims”. In this article we test whether collective victimhood facilitates conspiracy thinking. Study 1 showed that perceived group victimhood is associated with generic and group-specific conspiracy beliefs, but only for individua...

This study analyses quantitatively the content of thirty-nine political speeches made by political leaders of three political parties-New Democracy, Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA)-of different status represented in the Greek parliament. The leaders of these parties release annual commemorative spee...

In this comment, I focus on the integration of memories and human rights. The claim for the "self-evident" declares the claim for human rights not only of minorities, or oppressed and forgotten groups but, more broadly, of the self and different others. I consider human rights as they emerge from the content of intergenerational nostalgic memories...

Collective traumas may often lead to deep societal divides and internal conflicts. In this article, we propose that conspiracy theories emerging in response to victimizing events may play a key role in the breakdown of social cohesion. We performed a nationally representative survey in Poland (N = 965) two years after the Smoleńsk airplane crash in...

This article argues for a future-making approach to the Greek referendum vote of 2015. The idea is that in an anxiety-provoking situation, such as the one represented by the Referendum, a future-making approach is relevant to counter possibility-reducing thought and action. To test this idea, we asked potential voters to look back on the Referendum...

This study analyses the discourse of statements of the leaders of two Greek political parties commemorating the restoration of Greek democracy on 24 July 1974; the ruling partyNewDemocracy and the opposition, Coalition of the Radical Left.Wefocus on how these leaders act as entrepreneurs of their identities by constructing their ingroups in broad o...

The purpose of this study was to examine the content of autobiographical nostalgic memories, the reasons for their recollection and the elicited emotions. Furthermore, this study aimed to show how specific groups generate different representations of nostalgic memories. A total of 244 men and women (young, adults and older people) participated in t...

In the current issue of JISS, we discuss different forms of human thought related to nostalgia, replying to Luri Conceicao's commentary (2017; see this present issue of JISS). With regard to the distinction between normal and pathological nostalgia, we argue for a socio-psychological approach to the construction of thought as it has been evolved ov...

Abstraction and concretion in discursive construction of group identities: An analysis of commemorative political statements The present study focuses on identifying different ways of configurations of in-groups and outgroups in terms of their ambiguous or concrete depictions. Analysis is based on twenty four ceremonial statements from 2004 (before...

Our aim here is to delineate the connection between selective remembering and selective forgetting as it applies to lay historians listening to selective recountings of history. How does what a speaker remembers about a nation's past shape what is forgotten about the nation's past for the listener? To address this question, we will discuss psycholo...

Temporality and the self vis-a-vis the Greek referendum of 2015: Contributions of ’letters from the future’ as an instrument in deciphering political decision making

Positioning group identities across time: A qualitative analysis of the use of temporal account in ceremonial political communication

The present study aims to explore how the leaders of two political parties, the party in power New Democracy (ND) and one of the parties in opposition SYRIZA, depict ingroups and outgroups using a past, present or future account, when representing their group identities. It focuses on commemorative statements made by political leaders on the annive...

Nostalgic experiences: Content, reasons and emotions

Representational Content of Nostalgic Memories: An Inter-generational Study

Explicit and Implicit Forms of Autobiographical Memory: Identity Dimensions

The present study focuses on identifying different ways of alignment of political groups with democracy-related values, other events or key figures in social identity construction using past, present or future account. Analysis is based on ceremonial statements from five different years (2004, 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2014) of the leaders of two politi...

Difficulties in recognizing emotional signals might have serious implications for social interac-tions. Neurodegenerative diseases that affect neural networks involved in emotional displays processing might thus be connected with a disproportionate impairment in social life. This study aimed at examining the ability to decode basic emotions from dy...

AimAlthough the ability to recognize emotions through bodily and facial muscular movements is vital to everyday life, numerous studies have found that older adults are less adept at identifying emotions than younger adults. The message gleaned from research has been one of greater decline in abilities to recognize specific negative emotions than po...

Emotion recognition is vital to everyday life. However, numerous studies have found that older adults are less adept at identifying emotions, compared to younger adults. The aim of the present study was to identify the pattern of age differences in the ability to decode basic emotions from naturalistic visual emotional displays. The sample comprise...