Polish lab explores massive social change

Researchers at the University of Warsaw study strategies to help Poles tap the 'life and joy' of freedom after a troubled past.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

In a building in which Nazi secret police once plotted crimes against humanity and jailed innocents, Polish psychologists have come together with scientists from a host of other disciplines to help Poles surmount that oppressive past and navigate a new world of freedom and democracy.

The goal of this interdisciplinary force, the University of Warsaw's Institute for Social Studies (ISS), is to study the workings of Polish society and seek insight into social challenges facing the country. The brain child of Polish-born Stanford University psychologist Bob Zajonc, PhD, ISS is modeled after the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. At the time of ISS's founding, Zajonc directed the Michigan Institute, which studies social issues and behaviors, including aggression and violence, consumer attitudes, prejudice and racism, income fluctuations, education and voter behavior.

But whereas the Michigan Institute examines such trends in a relatively stable country, ISS is uniquely positioned to study them in a country undergoing large-scale political and economic transition, notes Zajonc. Poland is a "wonderful laboratory for studying social change" following its 1989 switch to democracy after decades of Nazi and Soviet oppression, says Polish psychologist Grazyna Wieczorkowska (pronounced Via-chor-kov-skah), PhD, who is the director of ISS.

And the researchers of ISS have no qualms about studying that change from a building that was the World War II headquarters of the Warsaw Gestapo, and that now houses their labs and offices, as well as the classrooms of the University of Warsaw psychology department.

The work of ISS "we need not be ashamed of," says Wieczorkowska, using a Polish idiom for pride. "Now this is a place where knowledge on forming stereotypes and prejudices is collected--knowledge that could have predicted wars. Life and joy have replaced our bad history. We have a social values mission."

By this she means ISS researchers analyze the problems that a free market brings on the heels of an oppressive history. After years of being dependent on government for almost all their economic needs, for example, many Poles have responded with uncertainty to the country's new entrepreneurial bent. Feelings of helplessness and unemployment have ensued. And, in turn, ISS researchers are studying ways to improve the people's prospects for success in their new social environment.

One way is to reform education to equip more people with the skills of the technological age. Another is to urge Polish people to take charge of their careers and pursue jobs with confidence and assertiveness.

But the ISS charge isn't an easy one. Funding for research, available mainly through the government-subsidized Polish Science Foundation, is tight. And while ISS is blessed with modern computers, Internet access and laboratory equipment, space is limited and faculty salaries are abysmally low--roughly $500 a month in U.S. terms--conditions that lead many would-be faculty to opt for jobs in the private sector.

Also, the country's new focus on individual achievement has spurred burgeoning enrollment at Polish universities. In the psychology department alone, enrollment has doubled over the past decade to 1,200 master's and undergraduate students. Classes and seminars, meanwhile, are kept small at about 20 students. This raises demand for teaching and squeezes the time faculty have for research.

Undaunted, however, ISS staff continue with a research mission that, as Wieczorkowska puts it, "is built mostly on enthusiasm and hard work."

'Built on enthusiasm'

According to Zajonc, tenacity in the face of challenge has always defined Polish social psychology. Even as University of Warsaw leadership and Poland's Soviet-controlled communist government pressured academics to adopt Soviet academic theory, Polish social psychologists followed American and Western-style social psychology.

They had, says Zajonc, "a sort of defiance, acting like Poland was a free country during the communist period."

Meanwhile, their Eastern bloc counterparts moved toward a Soviet model of studying psychology, which upheld Marxist assumptions and socialist solutions to social problems.

"Contrary to, for example, East German psychology, Polish psychologists enjoyed a relatively high level of freedom in their teaching and research ," says Wieczorkowska. "Our history taught Poles the value of resistance to foreign forces--150 years of lack of independence, foreign occupation. As a result, Poles value freedom much more than other nations do, so we are good in resistance."

Under the former communist regime, particularly during the martial law imposed from 1981 to 1983, Polish academic faculty were largely barred from accessing Western journals and traveling to Western countries to consort with other scientists. In addition, the foreign exchange rate for the Polish currency--the zloty--was so low that few Poles could afford to travel.

"Communication was difficult and finding Western publications was very challenging," says Wieczorkowska.

Despite the restrictions, Polish academics found ways to travel West, mostly through fellowships and study abroad. Those who went brought back journal articles and books. And although Polish schools required Poles to learn Russian, most Polish psychologists spoke English as a second language.

"Contrary to, for example, East
German psychology, Polish psychologists enjoyed a relatively high level of freedom in their teaching and research."

Grazyna Wieczorkowska
Institute for Social Studies

During Poland's communist years and before its negotiated transition to democracy in 1989, some Poles who were authorized to study abroad earned psychology doctorates from American and European institutions. Throughout those years, psychologists at Warsaw kept up ties with Zajonc and his colleagues at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and other western psychologists. Thus, Polish social psychology thrived and "formed the nucleus of ISS," says Zajonc.

After the 1989 transition, social scientists at the University of Michigan and Warsaw forged an exchange program that inspired Zajonc to create ISS in 1991. Since then, ISS has grown to include seven centers for sociological, psychological, economic, complex systems, political and migration research.

A laboratory of change

Driving much of that growth is the ISS focus on the social and economic upheaval following Poland's transition to democracy. This focus greatly enriches Western social psychology, which has traditionally focused on Americans in a stable, market economy, says psychologist Eugene Burnstein, PhD, a researcher at the Michigan Institute.

He, for example, is collaborating with ISS researchers to explore how different decision-making strategies enable Poles to adapt from a command economy, in which choices of schools, jobs, residences and goods and services were few and mediocre, to a market economy, in which choices are more numerous and attractive.

They have found that Poles who are typically undiscriminating in their decision-making feel less efficacious and less satisfied with their lives than they did before the transition in 1989. By comparison, Poles who are meticulous in making choices have adapted better to the new economy and have higher levels of satisfaction and self-efficacy.

One research project at ISS attempts to represent Polish social change visually, through computer modeling. The internationally renowned work, undertaken by the institute's Center for Complex Studies, combines the methodology of mathematics and the social and natural sciences. It shows that social change doesn't happen gradually throughout society over time, says the center's director Andrzej Nowak, PhD, but rather occurs in pockets that spread.

In Poland's case, some groups, particularly those in urban centers, immediately embraced the new economy and political system, while others resisted it. In time, supporters of change have begun to influence the resistors "in ripples spreading outward from the cities. Bubbles of new appear in the old, then expand and connect," Nowak says.

Measuring national behaviors

Another source of ISS pride is the Polish General Social Survey. This large-scale measure of Polish social attitudes is similar to the U.S. General Social Survey (GSS). A project overseen by the Michigan Institute and the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, the GSS is a personal interview survey of more than 30,000 U.S. households that gauges national behavior and opinion on issues ranging from abortion and religious practices, to beliefs about race, gender and politics.

Recent results of the Polish version reveal a slight increase in the public's optimism about Poland's new political system, but there is still a great deal of trepidation. Almost a quarter
of Poles still believe that being born into a wealthy family is "very important" to attaining success. By comparison, less than 5 percent of U.S. survey respondents think wealth is as important.

More in line with U.S. thinking, a third of Poles surveyed recently think education is "essential for getting ahead," up from 13 percent in 1992. But compared with Americans, twice as many Poles--upwards of 20 percent--think that "who you know" is more important in attaining success than intelligence, talent and achievement.

Underlying the trend are low levels of self-efficacy among Polish people and institutions--what Polish researchers call "social helplessness," says ISS psychologist Jerzy Trzebinski, PhD. Through research he's conducting on self-narratives, he hopes to help people shed this passivity.

Meeting educational needs

Trzebinski notes that Polish people increasingly realize that education is key to preparing for a career and shaping one's own life. As a result, Polish universities have seen an enormous influx of students. Warsaw's enrollment has grown from 25,000 to 50,000 students in the past five years.

Meanwhile, Polish universities were originally built to accommodate small numbers of students. Thus, a great need for educational reform faces the country--another task taken on by ISS and psychology faculty. They've broadened their educational programs by offering psychology courses at night, starting a new doctoral program at ISS, and running an intensive, international summer study program that brings in guest lecturers from the United States and other countries. Among last year's lecturers was social psychologist Elliot Aronson, PhD, of the University of California-Santa Cruz. Aronson and his book, "The Social Animal" (W.H. Freeman, 1994), have been a major influence on Polish social psychology and ISS, says Wieczorkowska. With ISS's recent expansion though, its researchers are beginning to outgrow their gray old building and are rallying Warsaw administrators to build them a larger facility on the main campus across town.

Perhaps the most formidable obstacle they face is the limited funding available for their research. Still, ISS researchers hope they can increasingly tap private funding for their research as Poland's new economic system grows stronger. Meanwhile, they'll keep pursuing new and varied research topics "that answer to the country's social needs," Wieczorkowska says.

For one, they plan to advise education administrators on ways to revamp Polish grade-school curricula and testing to prepare more students for college. And they've also begun examining the effects of a new trend--an influx of migrants from Eastern Europe--on Poland's economic and social structure.

"ISS is a complex system, and that's what makes it thrive," says Wieczorkowska. "There are three main adjectives to describe us--we are interdisciplinary, we are international and we are complex."

And, they are also determined, says Burnstein.

"ISS faculty could quadruple their salaries if they went elsewhere," says Burnstein. "But they stay there because they're good at what they do and they're a dedicated bunch. It's good for the world to know about them."

To find out more about ISS, visit its web site at www.iss.uw.edu.pl/ EN/E_iss_ppl.html.



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