The Negative Social World: The Polish Culture of Complaining

In this article, it is proposed that a culture of complaining thrives in Poland. The building blocks of this culture include: (1) the norm of negativity of one's own emotional states, (2) the norm of negativity of the social world, and (3) the behavioral scripts of complaining (rituals of expressing dissatisfaction). Various results of both experimental and correlational research are presented showing that complaining is widespread among Poles and has several important correlates. Specifically, it has been shown that complaining leads to or is accompanied by: (1) lowered moods and increased negative emotions, (2) decreased life satisfaction and optimism, (3) belief in the negativity of the social world, especially if addressed in a general rather than specific way, and (4) belief in an unjust social world. Emotional and cognitive concomitants of complaining are discussed as constituents of a negativity trap, which is detrimental to social adaptation because it leads to emotional and motivational deficits (at the individual level) and hampers the development of system justification ideology (at the collective level).