Paweł Muniak
Biographic Data
| ID | 2818984 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paweł Muniak |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paweł |
| FAMILY NAME | Muniak |
| SIGNATURE | MUNIAK P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Uniwersytet SWPS |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3983-147X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Impact of Mimicry on Tobacco Addiction
Tobacco addiction, a major cause of preventable death, requires an understanding of how it develops and is maintained. This paper examines mimicry as a ‘social glue’ in smokers' social interactions and its influence on the development and maintenance of smoking behaviour. A first laboratory experiment showed that nonverbal mimicry (physical actions, hand and arm movements and body posture) increases cigarette consumption due to increased liking f…
A Kick to Desire
Major sporting events exert manifold influences on people’s intra- and interpersonal experiences. Preliminary findings suggest that they affect sexuality, but the evidence has been limited to population-level outcomes such as birth rates. Direct, individual-level evidence and research on underlying processes are missing. In this preregistered study, we investigated the relationship between the success of national men’s soccer teams during the UEF…
Source awareness and vaccine attitudes
Previous studies on combating disinformation have focused on methods based on rational argumentation like correcting misinformation or on news and media and literacy. However, these methods have proved to be less effective when strong emotions are involved. The presented research tested the effectiveness of a new technique for combating anti-vaccine disinformation: making people aware that most anti-vaccine disinformation comes from a source that…
Mimicry and Prosocial Behavior in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Mimicry is a key mechanism of social interaction that promotes affiliation and prosocial behavior. In autism spectrum disorder (ASD), however, evidence is mixed: basic imitation abilities often appear intact, but their regulation by social cues and context may be altered. This study tested whether children with ASD show prosocial behaviors after being mimicked. Thirty children with ASD (ages 6–9) were randomly assigned to a mimicry or no-mimicry …
“Threatened-Me” Rule
The spillover effect of mimicry
It Matters to Whom You Compare Yourself
Unrealistic Optimism (UO) appears when comparing participants’ risk estimates for themselves with an average peer, which typically results in lower risk estimates for the self. This article reports nuanced effects when comparison varies in terms of the gender of the peer. In three studies (total N = 2,468, representative sample), we assessed people’s risk estimates for COVID-19 infections for peers with the same or other gender. If a peer’s gende…
Is the Covid-19 Fake News game good news? Testing whether creating and disseminating fake news about vaccines in a computer game reduces people's belief in anti-vaccine arguments
Improving vaccination eagerness is crucial, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and establishing new procedures to achieve that goal is highly important. Previous research (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019a, 2019b) has indicated that playing the "Bad News" game, in which a player spreads fake news to gain followers, reduces people's belief in fake news. The goal of the present paper was to test an analogous new game called "COVID-19 …
Exposing People to Others Not Following Recommendations Reduces Unrealistic Optimism. An Experiment During a Pandemic
Forty years of research on Unrealistic Optimism - a delusion that negative events are less likely and positive events are more likely to happen to oneself (in comparison to others) - has proved to be robust. Importantly, as a result, people holding this bias reduce their engagement in health prevention and following medical recommendations, etc., leading to the conclusion that this bias is dangerous. However, there is hardly any research on how t…
Mimicry or Responsiveness? Verifying the Mimicry-as-a-Social-Glue Hypothesis
Mimicry has been proven to be responsible for many social consequences linked to social bonding: improved trust, liking, and rapport. This accumulating empirical evidence has mostly been based on experimental designs focused on comparisons between two conditions: an experimental condition involving mimicking behavior versus a control condition in which any movement or direct verbal reaction is withdrawn. Thus, it is unclear whether the observed d…
Biased Social Comparison in the Moment of Crisis
The better-than-average effect (BTAE) is a mechanism where people perceive oneself as better than others. The BTAE could be one of the phenomena explaining why people follow - in the moment of a global health crisis - guidelines ("I am superior to others, and I [will]) take extra precautions, e.g., a vaccine shot"). In this paper, we investigate the BTAE with 3,066 respondents. In Study 1, in all countries, across two measurements in time, the BT…
Imagining is Not Observing
Individuals automatically mimic a wide range of different behaviors, and such mimicking behavior has several social benefits. One of the landmark findings in the literature is that being mimicked increases liking for the mimicker. Research in cognitive neuroscience demonstrated that mentally simulating motor actions is neurophysiologically similar to engaging in these actions. Such research would predict that merely imagining being mimicked produ…
Covid-19 and a biased public mentality toward infection and vaccination
Unrealistic Optimism in the context of COVID-19 is described as the tendency to perceive peers as being more at risk of infection. To date, however, no research has proposed more specific comparisons. The present article not only replicates the most recent body of literature showing that people perceive themselves as less prone to COVID-19 infection than their peers, but fills the aforementioned gap by providing additional and more specific compa…
Guilt is never to be doubted? A novel experimental procedure
The literature shows that researchers used a wide variety of types of guilt manipulation. A common feature of these studies was that the subjects were not able to doubt their guilt. Additionally, these methods did not take into account the psychometric measurement of this emotion, as well as the possibility of simultaneously inducing other feelings, such as sadness or anger. In a carefully designed experiments, we found a method that is approacha…
Biased Social Comparison in the Moment of Crisis
The better-than-average effect (BTAE) is a mechanism where people perceive oneself as better than others. The BTAE could be one of the phenomena explaining why people follow - in the moment of a global health crisis - guidelines ("I am superior to others, and I [will]) take extra precautions, e.g., a vaccine shot"). In this paper, we investigate the BTAE with 3,066 respondents. In Study 1, in all countries, across two measurements in time, the BT…
Guilt is never to be doubted? A novel experimental procedure
The literature shows that researchers used a wide variety of types of guilt manipulation. A common feature of these studies was that the subjects were not able to doubt their guilt. Additionally, these methods did not take into account the psychometric measurement of this emotion, as well as the possibility of simultaneously inducing other feelings, such as sadness or anger. In a carefully designed experiments, we found a method that is approacha…
Imagining is Not Observing
Individuals automatically mimic a wide range of different behaviors, and such mimicking behavior has several social benefits. One of the landmark findings in the literature is that being mimicked increases liking for the mimicker. Research in cognitive neuroscience demonstrated that mentally simulating motor actions is neurophysiologically similar to engaging in these actions. Such research would predict that merely imagining being mimicked produ…
Covid-19 and a biased public mentality toward infection and vaccination
Unrealistic Optimism in the context of COVID-19 is described as the tendency to perceive peers as being more at risk of infection. To date, however, no research has proposed more specific comparisons. The present article not only replicates the most recent body of literature showing that people perceive themselves as less prone to COVID-19 infection than their peers, but fills the aforementioned gap by providing additional and more specific compa…
It Matters to Whom You Compare Yourself
Unrealistic Optimism (UO) appears when comparing participants’ risk estimates for themselves with an average peer, which typically results in lower risk estimates for the self. This article reports nuanced effects when comparison varies in terms of the gender of the peer. In three studies (total N = 2,468, representative sample), we assessed people’s risk estimates for COVID-19 infections for peers with the same or other gender. If a peer’s gende…
Is the Covid-19 Fake News game good news? Testing whether creating and disseminating fake news about vaccines in a computer game reduces people's belief in anti-vaccine arguments
Improving vaccination eagerness is crucial, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and establishing new procedures to achieve that goal is highly important. Previous research (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019a, 2019b) has indicated that playing the "Bad News" game, in which a player spreads fake news to gain followers, reduces people's belief in fake news. The goal of the present paper was to test an analogous new game called "COVID-19 …
Exposing People to Others Not Following Recommendations Reduces Unrealistic Optimism. An Experiment During a Pandemic
Forty years of research on Unrealistic Optimism - a delusion that negative events are less likely and positive events are more likely to happen to oneself (in comparison to others) - has proved to be robust. Importantly, as a result, people holding this bias reduce their engagement in health prevention and following medical recommendations, etc., leading to the conclusion that this bias is dangerous. However, there is hardly any research on how t…
Mimicry or Responsiveness? Verifying the Mimicry-as-a-Social-Glue Hypothesis
Mimicry has been proven to be responsible for many social consequences linked to social bonding: improved trust, liking, and rapport. This accumulating empirical evidence has mostly been based on experimental designs focused on comparisons between two conditions: an experimental condition involving mimicking behavior versus a control condition in which any movement or direct verbal reaction is withdrawn. Thus, it is unclear whether the observed d…
Biased Social Comparison in the Moment of Crisis
The better-than-average effect (BTAE) is a mechanism where people perceive oneself as better than others. The BTAE could be one of the phenomena explaining why people follow - in the moment of a global health crisis - guidelines ("I am superior to others, and I [will]) take extra precautions, e.g., a vaccine shot"). In this paper, we investigate the BTAE with 3,066 respondents. In Study 1, in all countries, across two measurements in time, the BT…
“Threatened-Me” Rule
The spillover effect of mimicry
Source awareness and vaccine attitudes
Previous studies on combating disinformation have focused on methods based on rational argumentation like correcting misinformation or on news and media and literacy. However, these methods have proved to be less effective when strong emotions are involved. The presented research tested the effectiveness of a new technique for combating anti-vaccine disinformation: making people aware that most anti-vaccine disinformation comes from a source that…
Mimicry and Prosocial Behavior in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Mimicry is a key mechanism of social interaction that promotes affiliation and prosocial behavior. In autism spectrum disorder (ASD), however, evidence is mixed: basic imitation abilities often appear intact, but their regulation by social cues and context may be altered. This study tested whether children with ASD show prosocial behaviors after being mimicked. Thirty children with ASD (ages 6–9) were randomly assigned to a mimicry or no-mimicry …
The Impact of Mimicry on Tobacco Addiction
Tobacco addiction, a major cause of preventable death, requires an understanding of how it develops and is maintained. This paper examines mimicry as a ‘social glue’ in smokers' social interactions and its influence on the development and maintenance of smoking behaviour. A first laboratory experiment showed that nonverbal mimicry (physical actions, hand and arm movements and body posture) increases cigarette consumption due to increased liking f…
A Kick to Desire
Major sporting events exert manifold influences on people’s intra- and interpersonal experiences. Preliminary findings suggest that they affect sexuality, but the evidence has been limited to population-level outcomes such as birth rates. Direct, individual-level evidence and research on underlying processes are missing. In this preregistered study, we investigated the relationship between the success of national men’s soccer teams during the UEF…
Psychology (10 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Mimicry (5 works) · Optimism, Hope, and Well-being (5 works) · Optimism (4 works) · 2019-20 coronavirus outbreak (3 works) · Action Observation and Synchronization (3 works) · COVID-19 and Mental Health (3 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (3 works) · Medicine (3 works)