Małgorzata Wierzba

According to PIAAC studies, a significant proportion of adults in Poland demonstrate low literacy skills, yet no accessible, standardized tool exists to diagnose these deficits. To address this gap, we developed CZYTEST, an online, self-administered assessment of functional reading comprehension tailored to the lower end of the adult literacy spectrum. We describe the test’s theoretical framework, item construction, and psychometric validation based on a representative sample of Polish adults (N = 400). The assessment utilizes functional texts (e.g., medical leaflets, job ads) with items tackling comprehension and was calibrated using a two-parameter logistic (2PL) Item Response Theory (IRT) model. Results confirmed the tool’s unidimensionality and high reliability (α = .88). Using Gaussian mixture modeling and external criteria (e.g., self-reported reading difficulties), we established empirically derived cutoff scores that effectively distinguish struggling readers from those with functional proficiency. Findings demonstrate that reliable, unproctored online assessment of low-literacy adults is feasible using ungoogleable items. CZYTEST provides a scalable, ecologically valid solution for identifying functional illiteracy in research and practice.

Climate change is a serious threat to both people and ecosystems around the globe. This makes it increasingly important to understand what drives pro-environmental behavior (PEB). Emotions are increasingly recognized as key drivers of PEB, and cognitive appraisals behind them seem to shape the behavioural outcomes. We conducted a preregistered study on the influence of distinct emotions—anger, compassion, and hope—on PEB. Participants (N=1029 in Poland, N=1010 in Norway) read emotional stories designed to elicit a specific set of appraisals related to climate change, or neutral stories. Subsequently, they completed two tasks designed to measure different types of PEB: a time and effort task (Work for Environmental Protection Task; WEPT) and a monetary donation task. We hypothesised that reading emotional (as compared to neutral) stories will drive PEB and that specific appraisal patterns related to distinct emotions will promote different behavioural intentions. We also predicted that demographic variables and other personal factors would moderate the relationship between emotions and PEB. Contrary to our expectations, collected data provide no evidence for the hypothesised effects, consistently across both samples. We discuss potential areas for further research including the use of validated naturalistic and immersive stimuli, prolonged exposure to interventions, momentary assessment of behaviours, and matching behavioural tasks to emotional manipulation.

Climate change threatens human populations and ecosystems worldwide. Neuroscience research on this topic is emerging, but validated questionnaires, stimuli, and fMRI tasks remain scarce. Here, we present the CLIMATE BRAIN dataset, a multimodal collection of questionnaire, behavioral, and neuroimaging data from 160 young, healthy Polish individuals. Designed to advance research on climate emotions and pro-environmental behavior, the dataset includes individuals with moderate climate change concern. Participants read anger and hope-evoking stories about climate change and made pro-environmental decisions. The dataset includes data from (1) various questionnaire measures, including the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE); (2) a neuroimaging task for measuring emotional reactions to standardized Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS); and (3) a neuroimaging task based on Carbon Emission Task (CET) to measure climate action-taking. For technical validation, we provide image quality metrics and show the evidence for the effectiveness of the tasks consistent with prior studies. To our knowledge, the proposed multimodal dataset is currently the only publicly available resource specifically designed to investigate human brain responses to climate change.

Climate change presents a fundamental threat to human populations and ecosystems across the globe. Neuroscience researchers have recently started developing ways to advance research on this topic. However, validated questionnaires, experimental stimuli, and fMRI tasks are still needed. Here we describe the CLIMATE BRAIN dataset, a multimodal collection of questionnaire, behavioural, and neuroimaging data related to climate change, acquired from 160 healthy individuals. In particular, it includes data from (1) various questionnaire measures, including the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE); (2) a neuroimaging task for measuring emotional reactions to standardized Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS); and (3) a neuroimaging task based on Carbon Emission Task (CET) to measure climate action-taking. For technical validation, we provide image quality metrics and show the evidence for the effectiveness of tasks consistent with prior studies. To our knowledge, the proposed dataset is currently the only publicly available resource specifically designed to investigate human brain responses to climate change.

Climate change is widely recognised as an urgent issue, and the number of people concerned about it is increasing. While emotions are among the strongest predictors of behaviour change in the face of climate change, researchers have only recently begun to investigate this topic experimentally. This may be due to the lack of standardised, validated stimuli that would make studying such a topic in experimental settings possible. Here, we introduce a novel Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set. ECCS consists of 180 realistic short stories about climate change, designed to evoke five distinct emotions—anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope—in addition to neutral stories. The stories were created based on qualitative data collected in two independent studies: one conducted among individuals highly concerned about climate change, and another one conducted in the general population. The stories were rated on the scales of valence, arousal, anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope in the course of three independent studies. First, we explored the underlying structure of ratings (Study 1; n = 601). Then we investigated the replicability (Study 2; n = 307) and cross-cultural validity (Study 3; n = 346) of ECCS. The collected ratings were highly consistent across the studies. Furthermore, we found that the level of climate change concern explained the intensity of elicited emotions. The ECCS dataset is available in Polish, Norwegian and English and can be employed for experimental research on climate communication, environmental attitudes, climate action-taking, or mental health and wellbeing.

Climate change is widely recognized as an urgent issue, and the number of people concerned about it is increasing. While emotions are among the strongest predictors of behaviour change in the face of climate change, researchers have only recently begun to investigate this topic experimentally. This may be due to the lack of standardised, validated stimuli that would make studying such a topic in experimental settings possible. Here, we introduce a novel Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set. ECCS consists of 180 realistic, short stories about climate change, designed to evoke five distinct emotions - anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt, and hope - in addition to neutral stories. The stories were created based on qualitative data collected in two independent studies: one conducted among individuals highly concerned about climate change, and another one conducted in the general population. The stories were rated on the scales of valence, arousal, anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt, and hope in the course of 3 independent studies. First, we explored the underlying structure of ratings (Study 1; n = 601). Then we investigated the replicability (Study 2; n = 307) and cross-cultural validity (Study 3; n = 346) of ECCS. The collected ratings were highly consistent across the studies. Furthermore, we found that the level of climate change concern explained the intensity of elicited emotions. Altogether, the ECCS dataset is available in Polish, Norwegian and English and can be employed for experimental research on climate communication, environmental attitudes, climate action taking, or mental health and wellbeing.

There is an increasing research interest in emotional responses to climate change and their role in climate action and psycho-social impacts of climate change. Recently, addressing a gap in methods, Marczak et al. (2022) developed the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE), a measure of eight distinct emotional responses to climate change. Yet, the ICE was developed in a single cultural context only (Poland), and its concurrent validity was tested using a limited set of variables. Here, we contribute to the scientific debate about emotional responses to climate change with original quality-controlled data from the general populations in Norway (N = 491) and Ireland (N = 485). We first confirm the 8-factor structure of the Norwegian and English versions of the ICE via confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). Next, we demonstrate a high degree of cross-cultural measurement invariance of the ICE across Norway, Ireland and Poland. In the final step, we corroborate and extend the nomological span of climate emotions, showing that they are differentially linked to climate change perceptions, mitigation policy support, various socio-demographics, loneliness and alienation, as well as to environmental activism and the willingness to renounce one’s own immediate self-interests in favour of the natural environment. Overall, this research presents evidence for the structural, cross-cultural and concurrent validity of the ICE. Moreover, it provides tools and an informed basis for cross-cultural research on emotional responses to climate change.

It is now widely accepted that we are in a climate emergency, and the number of people who are concerned about this problem is growing. Yet, qualitative, in-depth studies to investigate the emotional response to climate change were conducted either in high-income, western countries, or in low-income countries particularly vulnerable to climate change. To our knowledge, there are no qualitative studies conducted in countries that share great barriers to decarbonization while being significant contributors to carbon emissions. Since climate change affects people globally, it is crucial to study this topic in a variety of socio-political contexts. In this work, we discuss views and reflections voiced by highly concerned residents of Poland, a Central European country that is a major contributor to Europe's carbon emissions. We conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with Polish residents, who self-identified as concerned about climate change. A variety of emotions related to climate change were identified and placed in the context of four major themes: dangers posed by climate change, the inevitability of its consequences, attributions of responsibility, and commonality of concern. Our findings highlight a variety of often ambivalent and conflicting emotions that change along with the participant’s thoughts, experiences and behaviours. Furthermore, we describe a wide repertoire of coping strategies, which promoted well-being and sustained long-term engagement in climate action. As such, our work contributes to research on a broad array of climate-related emotions.