The history and the future of social psychology
The Department of Social Psychology is our oldest and one of the key departments. Its founder and the first long-standing Head was Professor Krystyna Skarżyńska. The core of the Department’s present faculty comprises its first graduates, including the SWPS University’s Vice-Rector for Research, Aleksandra Cisłak-Wójcik, Ph.D. Associate Professor, and the current Head of the Department, Wojciech Kulesza, Ph.D. Associate Professor. The present Rector of SWPS University, Professor Roman Cieślak, is also a long-term member of the Department’s staff.
Academics affiliated with the Department specialize in social psychology, but their research interests also include cross-cultural psychology, stress and professional burnout, language inclusivity and its effects on perceptions of social phenomena.
The Department of Social Psychology trained and subsequently hired the first graduates of the Warsaw School of Social Psychology. When we completed our degrees, we felt very passionate and intellectually stimulated. As academic teachers, we began to convey this passion to our students. Would the students say that we have succeeded? I suppose so. Dorota Wiśniewska-Juszczak and Konrad Maj received numerous awards for outstanding teaching achievements based on students' evaluations.
Wojciech Kulesza, Ph.D./Associate Professor
Head of the Department of Social Psychology in Warsaw
In 2005, when I started my dream job as a research and technical assistant at the Department of Social Psychology, it was already staffed by first and second-year graduates of the Warsaw School of Social Psychology, including Dorota Wiśniewska-Juszczak, Wojciech Kulesza, Konrad Maj, and Magda Safron. It was a great team and I was very happy to be a part of it. Kamil Henne also joined the team that year. We look back at that time of our lives quite often. It has certainly shaped us and the values we share. We practice social psychology on a daily basis—whether we interact with students, advize in doctoral dissertations, or work in academic teams. Here, psychology is the queen of sciences.
Aleksandra Cisłak-Wójcik, Ph.D./Associate Professor
Vice-Rector for Research at SWPS University
Faculty of the Department of Social Psychology in 2005 during a meeting in Kukle. In the upper row, first from the left stands Professor Roman Cieślak, present Rector of SWPS University
Social psychologist: the profession of the future
During an anniversary meeting for the former and current faculty, the team not only looked back at the history of the Department but also pondered its future, and the challenges that lie ahead of social psychologists. Furthermore, the academics discussed how to prepare students for working in a world beset by multiple crises.
Careers in social psychology are definitely the professions of the future. The COVID-19 pandemic has forcefully reminded us that people are “social animals.” We are facing the challenge of rebuilding and rearranging damaged social relations. We focus on the problem of chronic stress and the issue of distrust of institutions and authority, as manifested by reluctance to the vaccination program.
We will certainly have to devote a lot of energy to mitigate the psychological effects of the climate crisis and the migration it will cause in the coming years. In turn, we witness positive effects of social change, for example, in the feminization of the Polish language; and since language affects the way we think about the world, this is where the change begins.
Social psychologists may also be very useful in the process of restoring interpersonal relations in the war-stricken Ukraine. It is a challenge for cross-cultural psychology, which is also in the domain of our department.
Wojciech Kulesza, Ph.D./Associate Professor
Head of the Department of Social Psychology in Warsaw
25 years of training top-quality psychologists
Psychology was the first university program that was launched upon the establishment of the Warsaw School of Social Psychology in 1996. At that time, 500 students enrolled in a five-year Master's degree studies in Warsaw. Currently, almost 10,000 people study psychology at SWPS University in five major cities across Poland. Additionally, every year, 2,000 professionals obtain their Graduate Certificates in this field.
Over the past 25 years, we have become one of the most prestigious scientific centers in the field of psychology in Poland, and one of the largest centers of psychological education in the world. We run undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and post-graduate programs. In addition, we have the right to grant postdoctoral degrees (habilitacja) in psychology.
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