Applied Social Change (ASCh) Hub

Three Societies Hub members, Dr Magdalena Zawisza, Dr Annelie Harvey and Sarah Gradidge, are collaborating on an international 70+ country project to test effective interventions to encourage collective climate action (project leads: Dr Madalina Vlasceanu, Dr Kimberly Doell & Prof Jay J. Van Bavel). This topic is increasingly important in light of worsening climate change and is a highly ambitious project to test climate action interventions which work on a global scale.

Two of our Societies Hub members, Dr Magdalena Zawisza and Sarah Gradidge, are part of a 63-country project to explore if exposure to nature has implications for body image. The international project is led by Prof Viren Swami, Dr Ulrich Tran, Prof Stefan Stieger and Prof Martin Voracek and aims to collect the richest dataset on this topic to date. The protocol for the project can be viewed at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.11.002

Towards Gender Harmony is the biggest thus far mega-study investigating a potential key barrier to gender equality progress globally: masculinity threat. Data from 67 countries over 100 collection sites was completed at the end of 2019. This corpus of data updates our knowledge on contemporary cross-national understanding of femininity, masculinity, gender stereotypes, attitudes and related behaviours as they link to gender (in)equality.

The project was awarded £136k by the Polish National Science Centre, and Dr Magdalena Zawisza is a co-applicant together with Dr Natasza Kosakowska (principal investigator, University of Gdansk, Poland), Prof Joseph Vandello and Prof Jennifer Bosson (University of South Florida, USA) and a team of six researchers.

Our ASCh Hub members worked collaboratively analysis secondary data from 7,249 adults from the Taking Part 2019-20 survey of UK households. We found that attending live sporting events such as football matches improved subjective wellbeing and reduced loneliness above and beyond demographic predictors. This study has been published in Frontiers in Public Health and attracted media attention.

This interdisciplinary research project is led by Dr Dawn Wooley in collaboration with others including Prof Sally Dibb and Dr Magdalena Zawisza. It aims to reduce the use of harmful gender stereotypes in selfies. While gender stereotypes have been recognized as psychologically harmful and were banned in British advertising in 2019, the regulations do not apply to other media content, such as selfies posted on social media. A whistle-blower at Facebook recently revealed that photo sharing on Instagram makes 30% of teen girls feel worse about their body image, while 13% of British teenagers who report suicidal thoughts have linked them to Instagram. Drawing on digital, psychological and creative approaches, this project will investigate the impact of gender stereotypes in selfies and find ways to counter their undesirable effects on young women.

This interdisciplinary project applies expertise from cognitive psychology (Dr David Pearson, lead) and consumer psychology (Dr Magdalena Zawisza) together with built environment (Dr Fred Sherratt) research to understand and improve health and safety practices across different structures in a road maintenance company.

It is conducted in partnership with Ringway Jacobs, a large highway service provider, and it worth £194,375, including a 50% grant from Innovate UK.

Two of our members, Dr Nicola Gibson (lead) and Sarah Gradidge, are investigating links between viewing playfulness in pet animals and greater wellbeing and reduced anxiety regarding COVID-19. Links between pets' playfulness and wellbeing have not yet been explored, nor has this relationship been investigated in the context of a global pandemic.

Collaborating cross-disciplinarily with animal behaviourists (Dr Claudia Wascher and Dr Andrew Smith) and across institutions with a psychologist from the University of Edinburgh (Dr Steve Loughnan) and an animal behaviourist from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (Dr Raoul Schwing), the researchers foresee positive implications of this project for reducing loneliness and improving wellbeing both during and after COVID-19, especially among people who live only with pets.