Keynote Speakers

Nicolay Gausel

Biography

I am currently employed at the University of Stavanger (Norway) as a full professor of psychology. I am a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society, and have my PhD in social psychology from the University of Sussex, UK. The aim of my research is to find out how we deal with the things we find difficult in our lives so we can better help each other. I therefore do research in social psychology and emotion psychology with an emphasis on morality, self-critical emotions and psychological defense, as well as the related topic of stigma. The work I and we do on emotions (e.g., shame, guilt, rejection) and morality have been applied not only in psychology but in business, electronics, neuroscience, criminology, philosophy, medicine, politics, climate work, economics, education, agriculture, marketing, peace work and many other fields. I hope our research can be of help to you or someone you know.

What is shame? Shame as a relational network of emotion-experience

Abstract: Shame is a complex emotion involved in how the individual relate with oneself, close others, and the society in which the individual finds herself. Although there is great disagreement what shame is, there is agreements. In this presentation, I will highlight how we can understand shame, how it affects the individual and its social relations, and what we can expect when people experience shame. Specifically, I will explain how shame involves an activation of the self through violation of internalized moral norm. I will explain how shame involves criticism of self by the self and the risk of criticism of the self by imagined or real others – in addition to be a motivator for action. I will also address issues currently debated within shame literature, such as ‘guilt versus shame’, how to understand ‘shaming’ and ‘moral failure versus competence failure’. I will discuss a growing controversy on whether shame promotes defensive, anti-social motivations or pro-social, approach motivations. I will discuss if shame can be defined, and how it can be measured. Finally, I will suggest directions ahead for shame researchers and therapists and encourage a view of moral emotions as an integrated process where appraisals, feelings and responses interact in a relational network.

Susana Batel

Biography

Dr. Susana Batel is an assistant researcher at and sub-director of the Center for Research and Social Intervention (ECSH) at CIS, ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon. She has studied Social and Organisational Psychology and obtained her PhD in Social, Community and Environmental Psychology at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), Portugal. From 2010 to 2011 she worked as a consultant and researcher in Social and Environmental Psychology in Portugal. From 2012 to 2014 she worked as an Associate Researcher at the Geography department of the University of Exeter, UK. From September 2014 she has been working as an Integrated Researcher at Cis_ISCTE.

Her research adopts a critical and interdisciplinary perspective to examine the relationship between people, the territory and the climate crisis, specifically around energy transformations towards carbon neutrality, and associated social justice and political participation issues.She is also interested in how discourse and communication relate with social change and resistance. She is Co-Editor of the journal Papers on Social Representations and an Associate Editor of the journal Global Environmental Change.

Climate crisis and the green transition – The relevance of a critical psychosocial approach

Abstract: July 2023 has been considered as the hottest day on Earth, based in recorded history. Enacting solutions to tackle climate change is thus urgent and the transition to carbon neutral societies, namely based in renewable energy production, energy efficiency and nature-based services, has been deemed by governments in the last decades and across the world, as a key solution. However, local and social movements and social sciences’ research have made it increasingly evident that the current materialization of the so-called green transition also brings with it key challenges, namely in terms of socio-environmental impacts and injustices. In this keynote, I aim to discuss these challenges and to propose that Psychology, particularly a critical psychosocial approach to the green transition, is crucial to better understand and overcome those challenges and, with that, contribute to create more sustainable and fairer socio-ecological systems. I will identify and discuss the pillars of this critical psychosocial approach to the green energy transition and will illustrate them based on different examples from my empirical research on the green transition in Portugal. The applied and research implications of this approach and agenda will be discussed. 

H. Canan Sümer

Biography

H. Canan Sümer graduated from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 1980 with a B.S. degree in psychology and received her master’s degree from the University of New Haven in 1991 and her Ph.D. from Kansas State University in 1996 in the area of industrial and organizational psychology. Between 1996 and 2019 she worked as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology, METU. She is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Özyeğin University in Istanbul. Dr. Sümer is on the editorial board of a number of national and international journals in her field. She was a member of the European Federation of Psychological Associations Assessment Board. She has led a number of large-scale projects on military personnel selection and performance management. She was involved in a project sponsored by the Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) in which a computerized selection system along with an assessment center was developed to be used in the selection of blue-collar and white-collar employees. She is among the inventors of five national and two international patented inventions that came out of this project. Dr. Sümer has national and international publications on personnel selection, personality assessment, performance management, military retention, and gender role stereotypes topics. Her most recent research interests involve understanding harassment and mistreatment at work from a cultural perspective.

Multi Faces of Mistreatment at Work

Abstract: Workplace mistreatment (WM) is a serious problem threatening well-being of employees in almost all job levels, occupations, and industries. Empirical evidence has accumulated concerning antecedents, consequences, and moderators of different WM types. Yet, limited knowledge is available on how different forms of WM interact with each other within the larger organizational context and how culture come into play in the emergence of WM. In a series of studies using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, we identified seven types of WM (which we called Seven Evils). Four of the Seven Evils (i.e., workplace incivility, mobbing, abusive supervision, and sexual harassment) are interpersonal in nature and three of them (i.e., institutional sexism, institutional discrimination, and institutional abuse) originate from the organization itself. After developing psychometrically sound measures of the Seven Evils, we found that most WM types had universal as well as culture-specific components. We also found

that different forms of WM not only coexisted but had unique patterns of interactions in influencing critical outcome variables. Results in general suggested that while institutional forms of mistreatment enhanced the relationships between different interpersonal mistreatment types, they attenuated the relationships between interpersonal forms of WM and critical outcome variables, such as burnout and well-being. For example, workplace incivility predicted workplace sexual harassment, especially when institutional sexism was high, and the relationship between sexual harassment and burnout was attenuated in the existence of institutional abuse. Similarly, institutional abuse moderated the relationship between workplace incivility and mobbing, such that the relationship was stronger at high levels of organizational abuse, and institutional abuse moderated the relationship between mobbing and well-being, such that the negative association between mobbing and well-being was stronger at low levels of institutional abuse. An important avenue for future research would be to examine the cross-cultural replicability of the current findings.