News

Our new articles on loneliness and mental well-being in COVID-19 pandemic

We are happy to inform you, that our two papers on psychological aspects of coping with the COVID-19 pandemic have just been published by Frontiers:

Okruszek, Ł., Aniszewska-Stańczuk, A., Piejka, A., Wiśniewska, M. & Żurek, K. (2020). Safe but Lonely? Loneliness, Anxiety, and Depression Symptoms and COVID-19. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 3222. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.579181

Schudy, A., Żurek, K., Wiśniewska, M., Piejka, A., Gawȩda, Ł., & Okruszek, Ł. (2020). Mental Well-Being During Pandemic: The Role of Cognitive Biases and Emotion Regulation Strategies in Risk Perception and Affective Response to COVID-19. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 589973. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.589973

Enjoy reading while we work on the upcoming ones!

The interview with Aleksandra Piejka, MA in Gazeta Wyborcza

What is the difference between loneliness in scientific and in colloquial context? What makes us more and more lonely? How does loneliness influence the functioning of our body and our health?

Our PhD student, Aleksandra Piejka, MA explains what we know and what we do not yet know on loneliness in the latest weekend edition of Gazeta Wyborcza.

To go to the full version of the article, click HERE.

The start of the new Opus grant and our new scholarship holders

Today we can officially announce the start of our new NSC Opus grant ‘How affective cognitive reappraisals influence the social information processing in lonely people? The research using the ERP EEG and neuromodulation (HD-tDCS)’ led by Łukasz Okruszek, PhD.

Following the above, we are glad to introduce our new scholarhip holders and also fresh year students of the doctoral school of IP PAS!

Marta Chrustowicz, MA has been an active member of the Social Neuroscience Lab since March 2018. She graduated with an MA in Psychology (2019) and Cognitive Science (2020). In the current project Marta will take care of conducting the EEG research and the neurophysiological data analysis.
Szymon Mąka graduated with a BA in Sociology (2018) and an MA in Cognitive Science (2020) and currently he develops himself in the field of computational neuroscience. In this project he will take care of the behavioural data analysis, preparing the tDCS paradigm and modelling of the association between the behavioural and neurophysiological data.

Congratulations!

Our new paper in Psychiatria Polska

We are proud to introduce you to the new article ‘Polska wersja Testu Wskazówek – badanie pilotażowe pacjentów ze schizofrenią‘, authored by Małgorzata Krawczyk, MA, Anna Schudy, MA, Michał Jarkiewicz, PhD and Łukasz Okruszek, PhD, published in the latest edition of Psychiatria Polska.

Enjoy!

To read the full article, click HERE.

Brand new MAs in our Lab

We can officially announce that four students in our Lab graduated with MAs in June and July this year! All ladies – Aleksandra Aniszewska-Stańczuk, MA, Marta Chrustowicz, MA, Olena Nikolenko, MA and Karolina Żurek, MA prepared their theses under the supervision of Łukasz Okruszek, PhD and passed the MA defence with 5’s only!

Congratulations and best of luck in your future research girls!

Another NSC Opus grant for our Lab!

The Loneliness Project grows larger!

The project titled ‘How affective cognitive reappraisals influence the social information processing in lonely people? The research using the ERP EEG and neuromodulation (HD-tDCS)’ by Łukasz Okruszek, PhD, was granted with the funding of 1 087 260 PLN in the latest edition of National Science Center Opus grant competition. This funding will enable us to conduct the upcoming research on neurophysiological correlates of loneliness and isolation.

We are very happy and we hope to come back to you with the initial results of this project soon!

Morality, knowledge and pseudoscience susceptibility

What makes us fall for pseudoscientific theories easier? How much can our scope of general scientific knowledge and ideology contribute to that?

We presented our study aimed at finding the answers to those questions in a brand new article titled ‘Do you believe what you have been told? Morality and scientific literacy as predictors of pseudoscience susceptibility‘ by Aleksandra Piejka, MA and Łukasz Okruszek, PhD, published by Applied Cognitive Psychology journal.

To read the full, open access version of the article – click HERE.

Are we yet hungry for each other? The interview with Łukasz Okruszek, PhD

Is loneliness similar to hunger? Does the lack of personal contacts during the overwhelming isolation make us tired?

To find the answer for those questions read the interview in the newest edition of Polityka, in which the Head of our Lab, Łukasz Okruszek, PhD, explains, among others, the links between loneliness and the COVID-19 pandemic.

To go to the article, click HERE.

Safe but lonely? The COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness and mental well-being

Aa research shows, anxiety and loneliness caused by quarantine and lockdown are one of the most serious psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. How isolation influences our mental health? Are the lonely people especially at risk of psychological well-being decrease? How much is this problem affecting young adults, who are at lesser risk of developing severe COVID-19 symptoms and at the same time are quite likely to contribute to spreading of the virus?

Based on our research condusted by our team in two weeks starting from 15th March 2020, we can conclude that:

● Respondents are worried the most about the public health care crisis and the least about isolation. The tendency to worry about one’s own health is higher among people, who voluntarily applied the strict isolation reccommendations.

● People, who were more anxious and depressed in the beginning of the pandemic are particularly at risk of dealing with negative psychological effects of the pandemic. According to the results of our study, such state can be associated with the increase of worries about the COVID-19 crisis as well as progression of symptoms of lower well-being.

● The results show that the worries triggered by the pandemic and its consequences at the beginning of the state of epidemiological threat may be associated to the loneliness increase

● Loneliness contributes to the specific reactions to COVID-19 pandemic. Those who are lonely are also less worried about their own and their close ones’ health.

● However, at the same time lonely people appear to be more anxious about the negative effects of long-term isolation on their relationships with others and mental well-being.

● Lonely people consider financial problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to be more likely

Among young adults the feeling of loneliness may be both a consequence and a source of the pandemic-related anxiety. The association between loneliness and decreased mental well-being, as well as less concern for one’s own health and that of others makes loneliness likely to be one of major problems linked to the current epidemiological crisis.

The study was conducted between 15-17 March (511 participants) and 29-31 March 2020 (110 participants) on people aged 18-35 as a part of the Loneliness Project (find more information on own Project’s website: http://projekt-samotnosc.pl/. You can find a full script of the initial article on our research HERE.