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Attribution License (This issue of Social Psychological Bulletin (SPB) is dedicated to Professor Maria (Marysia) Lewicka, in honor of her 70th birthday. Maria is probably best known for her work on environmental psychology, with a particular focus on place-related collective memory (Lewicka, 2008) and place attachment (Lewicka, 2005, 2011). But she has also published in the fields of social cognition (Lewicka, 1988; Lewicka, Czapinski, & Peeters, 1992) and decision making (Lewicka, 1997). Maria’s considerable research interests also extend to social psychology, and she has been an active facilitator and mentor in this field for many years. In 2008, she was awarded the Jean-Paul Codol Medal for her contribution to the development of the European Association of Social Psychology. In 2017 she was awarded for her life-time scientific achievements by the Polish Association of Social Psychology. As Maria was a founder of SPB (which, at the time, was called Psychologia Spoleczna) and also its first Editor-in-Chief, we felt it was fitting that her birthday should be celebrated with a special issue of the journal—so, here it is!
This issue consists of seven papers that were either inspired by, or are closely related to, Maria’s academic interests. Although the contributions are highly diverse, they revolve around environmental psychology and socio-psychological research on collective memory.
A theme that emerged in the three first papers is socio-psychological insights into collective memory. Bilewicz, Stefaniak, Barth, Witkowska, and Fritsche (2019, this issue) show that the interest in the in-group history is organized around two basic dimensions of morality and competence. They also demonstrate that threats to personal control increase the interest in the in-group behaviors related to the morality dimension. Winiewski and Bulska (2019, this issue) show how the content of stereotypes regarding two different out-groups (Germans and Jews) differs depending on the geographical area of Poland and how it is linked with historical inter-group competition. The paper by Prusik, Oleksy, Wnuk, and Kula (2019, this issue) analyzes attitudes towards places related to Polish history during the communist era and how these attitudes are predicted by different forms of place attachment. The authors explore predictors of willingness to preserve sites that are associated with the communist regime. A common factor in these three papers is that they exceed a simplistic descriptive approach to collective memory studies and are theory driven, which is very close to Maria’s working method.
The next two articles focus on issues related to residents’ well-being. The paper by Manca, Cerina, and Fornara (2019, this issue) explores the role of user-centered design in predicting well-being and residential satisfaction among older adults. The authors consider the humanization of the environment as a key factor in fostering elders’ quality of life. Letki, Toruńczyk-Ruiz, and Kukołowicz (2019, this issue) examine the relation between neighborhood disorder and life satisfaction among majority and minority groups across neighborhoods in 12 Central-Eastern European countries. They consider the role of ethnic in-group presence in the neighborhood in moderating this effect. Bettencourt, Dixon, and Castro (2019, this issue) provide a (first) systematic review of the recent empirical work on the micro-ecology of segregation and intergroup relations. The authors apply a rigorous procedure to identify the relevant social psychology papers that have used observation as a data collection method, and they outline the key findings regarding the type of everyday life spaces in which informal segregation occurs and the social psychological processes that underlie it.
The last paper in this issue relates to conservation psychology—a subdiscipline that aims at explaining antecedents and determinants of people’s efforts to conserve nature. Milfont, Davies, and Wilson (2019, this issue) focus on moral foundations and political ideology as backgrounds for environmentalism. Specifically, the authors explore the moderating role of individualizing moral foundations of care— and fairness— in the relation between liberal ideology and engagement in different types of conservation behaviors. This contribution to the Festschrift alludes to recent and likely future scientific interests of Maria on honesty, dishonesty, and conservation behaviors.
This issue would not appear in its current form but for the efforts of a number of people. We are grateful to Michał Parzuchowski and Marcin Bukowski (SPB Editors-in-Chief), as well as to the PsychOpen staff for their help and support during the production process. We also express our gratitude to the reviewers who agreed to share their thoughts and comments on this collection. We really appreciate your dedication and your work under time pressure. We know who you are, and we owe you!
This Festschrift is edited by three of Maria’s former Ph.D. students and a genuine academic follower, whose interests have been strongly shaped by her work. Maria – you taught us well. Thank you.