Katarzyna Jaśko and Anna Potoczek participated in the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) 2025 Annual Meeting, held in Lisbon, Portugal, from October 16-18, 2025. The conference brought together scholars in social psychology to discuss current theoretical and empirical advances in the field.

Their work was featured in two symposia focused on political behavior, extremism, and motivational processes in contemporary society.
In the symposium Psychological Pathways to Extreme Behavior: The Double-Edged Sword of Certainty, Katarzyna Jaśko presented the talk “Extreme Political Candidates Mobilize Supporters (and Opponents) More than Moderates Particularly in a Polarized Society”. Drawing on five preregistered experiments involving more than 3500 participants, the research demonstrated that politically extreme candidates are more likely than moderates to mobilize both their supporters and opponents. The findings further showed that the appeal of extremist candidates depends on social norms and polarization within society, offering important insights into political mobilization.

Anna Potoczek also contributed to the symposium “Motivated Politics: Goals and Self-Regulation in Contemporary Political Behavior”. Her presentation, “Is History Written by the Victors? Societal Perceptions of Historical Success and Failure”, examined how people morally evaluate successful versus failed collective resistance movements. Across studies conducted in the United States, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Austria and Germany, the researchers found that successful resistance movements were consistently perceived as more moral, important, and pride-inducing than failed attempts, regardless of the sacrifices involved. These findings contribute to understanding how motivational processes shape collective memory and political judgment.

Their participation in SESP 2025 highlighted ongoing contributions from researchers from Change Lab to international discussions on political psychology, extremism, collective action, and social motivation.