Most psychological studies rely on student samples. Students are usually considered as more homogenous than representative samples both within and across countries. However, little is known about the nature of the differences between student and representative samples. This is an important gap, also because knowledge about the degree of difference between student and representative samples may allow to infer from the former to the latter group. Across 59 countries and 12 personality (Big-5) and attitudinal variables we found that differences between students and general public were partly substantial, incoherent, and contradicted previous findings. Two often used cultural variables, embeddedness and intellectual autonomy, failed to explain the differences between both groups across countries. We further found that students vary as much as the general population both between and within countries. In summary, our results indicate that generalizing from students to the general public can be problematic when personal and attitudinal variables are used, as students vary mostly randomly from the general public. Findings are also discussed in terms of the replication crisis within psychology.

This meta-analysis investigated the relations between creative self-efficacy (CSE) and creativity measures and hypothesized that self-assessed questionnaires would have a different relation to self-efficacy beliefs compared to other creativity tests. The meta-analysis synthesized 60 effect sizes from 41 papers (overall N = 17226). Taken as a whole, the relation between CSE and creativity measures was of medium size (r = .39). Subgroup analyses revealed that self-rated creativity correlated higher with self-efficacy (r = .53). The relation with divergent thinking (DT) tests was weak (r = .23). Creativity scales had a medium size relation (r = .43), and was stronger than the relation to verbal performance tasks (r = .27) and figural performance tasks (r = .19). In a comparison between measures focusing on the creative person (r = .47), the creative product (r = .32), and the creative process (r = .27), the person aspect was most strongly linked to CSE. Thus, the relation between self-efficacy and creativity measures is dependent on the type of measurement used, emphasizing the need for researchers to distinguish between different instruments-not the least between self-report scales and more objective test procedures. Conceptual implications are discussed and critique concerning the creativity concept is brought up.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments worldwide to impose movement restrictions on their citizens. Although critical to reducing the virus’ reproduction rate, these restrictions come with far-reaching social and economic consequences. In this paper, we investigate the impact of these restrictions on an individual level among software engineers who were working from home. Although software professionals are accustomed to working with digital tools, but not all of them remotely, in their day-to-day work, the abrupt and enforced work-from-home context has resulted in an unprecedented scenario for the software engineering community. In a two-wave longitudinal study ( N = 192), we covered over 50 psychological, social, situational, and physiological factors that have previously been associated with well-being or productivity. Examples include anxiety, distractions, coping strategies, psychological and physical needs, office set-up, stress, and work motivation. This design allowed us to identify the variables that explained unique variance in well-being and productivity. Results include (1) the quality of social contacts predicted positively, and stress predicted an individual’s well-being negatively when controlling for other variables consistently across both waves; (2) boredom and distractions predicted productivity negatively; (3) productivity was less strongly associated with all predictor variables at time two compared to time one, suggesting that software engineers adapted to the lockdown situation over time; and (4) longitudinal analyses did not provide evidence that any predictor variable causal explained variance in well-being and productivity. Overall, we conclude that working from home was per se not a significant challenge for software engineers. Finally, our study can assess the effectiveness of current work-from-home and general well-being and productivity support guidelines and provides tailored insights for software professionals.

The need for cognition refers to people’s tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking and has become influential across social and medical sciences. Using three samples from the United States and the United Kingdom ( N = 1,596), we introduce a six-item short version of the Need for Cognition Scale (NCS-18). First, we reduced the number of items from 18 to 6 based on the items’ discrimination values, threshold levels, measurement precision (item information curve), item–total correlations, and factor loadings. Second, we confirmed the one-factor structure and established measurement invariance across countries and gender. Finally, we demonstrated that while the NCS-6 provides significant time savings, it comes at a minimal cost in terms of its construct validity with external variables such as openness, cognitive reflection test, and need for affect. Overall, our findings indicate that the NCS-6 is a parsimonious, reliable, and valid measure of need for cognition.

Most published research focuses on describing differences, while neglecting similarities that are arguably at least as interesting and important. In Study 1, we modified and extended prior procedures for describing similarities and demonstrate the importance of this exercise by examining similarities between groups on 22 social variables (e.g., moral attitudes, human values, and trust) within 6 commonly used social categories: gender, age, education, income, nation of residence, and religious denomination (N = 86,272). On average, the amount of similarity between 2 groups (e.g., high vs. low educated or different countries) was greater than 90%. Even large effect sizes revealed more similarities than differences between groups. Studies 2–5 demonstrated the importance of presenting information about similarity in research reports. Compared with the typical presentation of differences (e.g., barplots with confidence intervals), similarity information led to more accurate lay perceptions and to more positive attitudes toward an outgroup. Barplots with a restricted y-axis led to a gross underestimation of similarities (i.e., a gross overestimation of the differences), and information about similarities was rated as more comprehensible. Overall, the presentation of similarity information achieves more balanced scientific communication and may help address the file drawer problem.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world.

Previous research found that the within-country variability of human values (e.g., equality and helpfulness) clearly outweighs between-country variability. Across three countries (Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom), the present research tested in student samples whether between-nation differences reside more in the behaviors used to concretely instantiate (i.e., exemplify or understand) values than in their importance as abstract ideals. In Study 1 (N = 630), we found several meaningful between-country differences in the behaviors that were used to concretely instantiate values, alongside high within-country variability. In Study 2 (N = 677), we found that participants were able to match instantiations back to the values from which they were derived, even if the behavior instantiations were spontaneously produced only by participants from another country or were created by us. Together, these results support the hypothesis that people in different nations can differ in the behaviors that are seen as typical as instantiations of values, while holding similar ideas about the abstract meaning of the values and their importance.

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