Profile
Professor Jerzy Trzebiński is a psychologist specializing in social psychology and personality psychology. He has been researching narratives as means of understanding social events, people and the self. He has published two monographs on the subject, including Narracyjna struktura wiedzy potocznej (Narrative structure of common knowledge) 1994, and Narracja jako sposób rozumienia świata (Narrative as a way of understanding the world) 2002. He researchers how the perception of life challenges as personal life history impacts one’s thinking and behavior. He also studies the impact of basic hope, i.e., a belief in a universal order, meaning and in the world, which in general, is a human-friendly place, on prosocial behavior and coping with difficult situations.
Professor Trzebiński is also interested in psychology of creativity, in particular the role of natural concepts (a mental representation of events or objects drawn from personal experience) in creative thinking. He researched the role of action-oriented representations in perception and social behavior.
He is a nominated member of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. In 2009, he was awarded the organization’s fellowship in recognition of his contribution to social psychology as an empirical discipline. He is a member of the Polish Society of Social Psychology (PSPS), Society of Personality and Social Psychology, and the European Association of Social Psychology.
He has published numerous articles in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Social Experimental Psychology, and Frontiers in Psychology. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Loss and Trauma, and in the past sat on editorial boards of the European Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, and Review of Psychology.
Professor Trzebiński was a Principal Investigator in several research projects funded by the State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) and the National Science Centre (NCN), including a 2014-2018 project “Narrative action control”. He is also a doctoral and Master’s thesis advisor (9 doctorates, and hundreds of Master’s theses).
He lectured at the University of Warsaw (1975-1999) and several higher education institutions in Canada and the United states (1980-1984 and 1986-1987).