Previous work has shown that challenging learning strategies like desirable difficulties improve long-term learning. Nonetheless, because they might be regarded as strict and demanding learning strategies, they should not be perceived as positive by everyone. They should, however, fit conservative political attitudes since those are, among others, positively correlated with individuals’ need for order and structure as well as with challenging learning environments. Hence, we hypothesized conservative political attitudes to be correlated with more positive attitudes towards desirable difficulties, towards the use of desirable difficulties at school, towards the preferred difficulty of the learning process, and towards deeper learning strategies. We conducted three online studies assessing US American students’ political attitudes and their attitudes towards such difficult and challenging learning strategies: Study 1 found correlations among more conservative political attitudes and more positive attitudes towards difficult and challenging learning strategies, whereas Study 2 found no significant linkages among these variables. Study 3 then showed that a more conservative political attitude and favorable ratings of Republican politicians, but also more favorable ratings of Democratic politicians were linked to more positive attitudes towards our dependent variables. Self-reported interest in and importance of politics were also positively correlated with positive attitudes towards difficult learning. Our results indicate that students’ political attitudes are generally linked to positive attitudes towards difficult and challenging learning strategies and are therefore important individual characteristics regarding applications and perceptions of these learning strategies. Future work focusing on these relationships, on causal effects, and on further related variables is valuable.
By violating social norms, deviant behavior is an important issue that affects society as a whole and also has serious consequences for its individuals. Different scientific disciplines have proposed theories on deviant behavior, which often fall short of predicting actual behavior. In this registered report, we will use data of the longitudinal National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine the predictability of juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior in adults, differentiating between drug-related, property, and violent offenses. We propose to compare the predictive accuracy of traditional regression models to different machine learning algorithms (elastic net regressions and gradient boosting machines). Furthermore, we will explore the differences in the selection of the most important predictors of juvenile delinquency vs. adult criminal behavior to consider developmental changes and potentially identify risk factors at an early stage.
This study investigated whether people’s personal belief in a just world (BJW) is linked to their willingness to physically distance themselves from others during the COVID-19 pandemic. Past research found personal BJW to be positively related to prosocial behavior, justice striving, and lower risk perceptions. If social distancing reflects a concern for others, high personal BJW should predict increased interest in social distancing. If social distancing reflects a concern for one’s personal risk, high personal BJW should predict decreased interest in social distancing. Results of a pre-registered internet-based study from Germany (N = 361) indicated that the higher people’s personal BJW, the more they generally practiced social distancing. This association still occurred when controlling for empathy, another significant predictor of social distancing. There were no mediation effects of empathy and risk perception. The findings extend knowledge on the correlates of social distancing in the COVID-19 pandemic which could be used to increase compliance among citizens.
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