Who is the contemporary artist? Social representation of the artist among visual art students

The paper presents the application of semantic field analysis to the reconstruction of the social representation of the contemporary artist among visual arts students. 124 students from the Faculty of Art of the Pedagogical University of Cracow and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow answered an openended question: Who is the artist in our time? The narrative material was used to reconstruct the equivalents, opposites, attributes, associations, activities of the subject and activities on the subject which constitute the semantic field of the concept “contemporary artist”. The conclusions, practical implications and direction for future studies are presented.

Mobbing and discrimination in companies. The importance of prevention

The authors of this paper sought to determine the role of companies’ internal policy and of the position of their management boards with regard to the fight against mobbing and discrimination. Employees at two companies were studied: 34.7% of the staff of a large foreign manufacturing company (201 people) and 54.5% of the staff of a medium-sized Polish service provider company (110 people). The research used the questionnaire method. A qualitative analysis was also performed on the data obtained on the basis of interviews with the employees and of observation. The results focus on a comparison of the two companies in the study. They refer to the types and frequencies of behavior bearing the hallmarks of mobbing and discrimination as well as to the reactions of the two companies’ management boards to the reports they received.

Temperament traits and preferences of music works with specific musical elements

The objective of the research was to check the relationship between temperament traits as classified by Pavlov and preferences for works of music containing specified musical elements. 145 students aged 19-26 took part in the study. The respondents completed the Pavlovian Temperament Survey and a Music Preferences Form. Statistical analysis showed that all the temperament traits classified by Pavlov were related to musical elements contained in the subjects’ chosen pieces of music. The following proved to be significant in regard to the subjects’ musical preferences: Tempo, Changes in Tempo, Rhythm Values in Relation to Metrical Basis, Number of Melodic Themes, Scale of Performance, and Meter. The results are consistent with studies indicating the impact of temperament traits (related to the need for stimulation) on music preferences.

Creative attitude and understanding of emotions by artistically-gifted students

The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between creative attitude and the understanding of emotions by artistically-gifted students. The study used the Creative Behaviour Questionnaire (KANH) by S. Popek and the Emotion Understanding Test (EUT) by A. Matczak and J. Piekarska. The empirical research was conducted in art schools in Poland. It included 271 people (girls and boys) of 15-18 years of age. Based on the results that were obtained it was concluded that there are dependencies between creative attitude and the understanding of emotions in the group of students in the study. The higher the level of the creative attitude and non-conformist and heuristic behaviors, the greater the ability the artistically-gifted students had to understand emotions.

Proactive coping as a kind of creative adaptation to a new workplace

The proactive dimension of human behavior is rooted in one’s need to create and control the environment. Individuals prefer to do things actively and creatively rather than being counteractive. The dynamics of the job market demand that individuals are increasingly independent and proactive, can easily adapt to change, and create their own future. This way of understanding a newcomer’s activity corresponds to proactive coping. The main goal of this study was to investigate the role of proactive coping of workers in a new workplace and in job adaptation outcomes, namely well-being. Data was collected from newly employed workers (N = 172) who agreed to participate in the study within a longitudinal evaluation design (one pre-test and a double post-test) during their first six months in a new workplace. Overall, the study demonstrates that proactive coping improves the adaptation of new employees, costing them less emotionally as they adjust to their new workplace. Additionally, the employees’ pre-entry experience (previously unemployed vs previously employed) moderated the relation between the analyzed variables.

Actor and identity. Actor’s psychological sense of identity

The article adopts an original approach to studying the phenomenon of the concept of “self” whose creator is the Canadian psychologist Rene L'Ecuyer. This is an idiographic method which generates data of both a quantitative and qualitative nature. The empirical studies presented in this article have been done in the milieu of professional actors and among students of theatrical schools. The results of the studies show differences in self concept in both groups. The differences between the group of students and the group of actors are of a qualitative nature and concern the number of utterances in the categories of structures, substructures and self-concept and the degree of importance of certain dimensions. In the group of actors, a difference in the hierarchy of importance of the dimension of self-concept is established. Two kinds of differences verify the hypothesis on the development of self-concept. The first is the phase of development, and the second – the level of development of self concept which the authoress suggests calling the level of the sense of identity.

Longitudinal research into purpose in life in outstanding Polish actors

The aim of longitudinal research into personality and axiology is to detect what differences, similarities and changes have occurred in these areas over a period of time. The article examines the character of changes in purpose in life in two generations of Polish actors on the basis of the author’s Personality and Axiological Model (MOA). The longitudinal studies and analyses conducted confirmed the influence of variables related to competence, relationships and autonomy (MOA components) on purpose in life spheres (affirmation of life, self-acceptance, goal orientation, sense of freedom, outlook for the future, attitude to death, univariate model). The study produced interesting results in the character and level of similarities and differences between two different generations of actors, which gives insight into the development of a creative person.

CogMap Analyst – a quantitative analysis of the structure and content characteristics of sketch drawings of cognitive maps of urbanized spaces

The paper presents the specification of the CogMap Analyst program, which has been created for the purpose of conducting an analysis of the structure and content of sketch drawings of cognitive maps of urbanized spaces. Assumptions for this analytic tool come from the neobehavioral understanding of the concept of cognitive maps, which has its source in the works of Tolman, and from the criteria of analyzing their contents and structure, which were developed by Lynch (1960). The program serves the purpose of collecting numerical data on the quantity, size, as well as placement and distortion of objects on drawings by participants in relation to the actual layout of the terrain, which was selected by the researcher, and to the sketch’s scale. This data may be used not only to determine the measurements on drawings, but also to determine possible connections with other variables, such as personal traits of participants and formal traits of the space, according to the research goals of particular scientific studies for which the CogMap Analyst program shall be used. In this article we present the theoretical basis for the tool that we have created, we compare its characteristics with other similar methods of quantitative analysis of sketch drawings of cognitive maps, and we present in detail the mode of operation and of data analysis employed by CogMap Analyst.

Affective response to a lottery prize moderates processing of payoffs and probabilities: An eye-tracking study

Expected utility theory posits that our preferences for gambles result from the weighting of utilities of monetary payoffs by their probabilities. However, recent studies have shown that combining payoffs and probabilities is often distorted by affective responses. In the current study, we hypothesized that affective response to a lottery prize moderates processing of payoffs and probabilities. Attentional engagement (measured by the number of fixations in the eye tracking experiment) was predicted by probability, value of an outcome, and their interaction, but only for affect-poor lottery tickets. A corresponding pattern of results was not observed in affect-rich lottery tickets, suggesting more simplified processing of such lotteries.

The sense of body boundaries – subjective determinants and implications for body self-relation in people with psychosomatic illnesses

This article seeks to explore the determinants of the sense of body boundaries and its implications for body self- relation in psychosomatic patients - patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) as well as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. Stepwise regression analysis and paths analysis were carried out. The most significant condition affecting the strength of the sense of body boundaries among IBS patients is their sensitivity to the violation of self- boundaries in the dimension of the social self. Likewise, among patients with skin diseases, the most important factor is their style of cognitive functioning (field independence). Furthermore, both similarities and differences have been found in the groups involved in the research in terms of determinants of the sense of body boundaries, as well as in comparison with the results from healthy patients. The results which were obtained indicated that the greater the strength of the sense of body boundaries in IBS patients, the greater its positive impact on the assessment of the patients’ own health, their physical attractiveness and comfort from touch, in a similar way to that in healthy people. As far as patients with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis are concerned, the sense of body boundaries was revealed to have a positive impact on the level of health orientation: active involvement with either maintaining or improving the health condition.