Jens H. Hellmann

No Space for Others? On the Increase of Students’ Self-Focus When Prodded to Think About Many Others:

In the present experiment, participants read about the presence of many versus few others in typical student-life situations. They subsequently wrote an essay about their perspectives on learning in groups. Using the program Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to analyze these essays signified that participants who read prompts that involved many (vs. few) other students used more first-person singular pronouns and fewer words related to others. We interpret this increase in self-focus as a consequence of induced social crowding.

“A letter for Dr. Outgroup”: on the effects of an indicator of competence and chances for altruism toward a member of a stigmatized out-group

The lost letter technique is an unobtrusive method to investigate attitudes in a particular population. Ostensibly lost letters from senders who apparently belong to different groups or addressed to recipients from apparently different groups are dispersed in public places, and return rates represent a measure of altruistic or discriminatory behavior toward one group or another. In two field experiments using the lost letter technique, we investigated the influence of group membership and the presence or absence of a doctorate degree as an indicator of competence on the likelihood of receiving helping behavior. Experiment 1 showed that a generic member of a low-status ethnic out-group (Turks living in Germany) was the target of discrimination, while a generic member of a non-stigmatized out-group (French in Germany) was not. Moreover, when the name of the member from the stigmatized out-group was (vs. was not) preceded by a doctorate degree, more of the allegedly lost letters were returned. There were no such differential effects for recipients who were members of the in-group (Germans) or the non-stigmatized out-group (French). Experiment 2 showed that a recipient from the stigmatized out-group (Turk) with a doctorate degree received more letters when the sender was German versus Turkish (i.e., from the recipient’s own group). Overall, the sender’s ethnic group membership was an important factor for the likelihood of receiving an ostensibly lost letter, in that fewer letters arrived from a sender with a Turkish (vs. German) name. We conclude that the likelihood of altruistic behavior toward out-group members can increase when in-group members intend to communicate with competent out-group members. Therefore, under certain conditions, the presentation of a highly competent member of an otherwise stigmatized out-group may serve as a discrimination buffer.

“Your words matter!” Relevance of individual participation in xMOOCs:

Massive open online courses are increasingly popular. One characteristic of most massive open online courses is that they are offering educational contents to masses of different individual learners. At the same time, a particular challenge for the individual learner could be the massiveness of such courses, that is, that one is part of a large crowd of other learners. Being one of many other individuals can have negative consequences on learning activities because an individual might experience a sense of virtual crowding. The experiment described in this article investigated how course type (xMOOC vs virtual seminar) and relevance of individual participation (low vs high) impact online learners’ engagement. Results showed that participants in an xMOOC condition referred to themselves and their peers to a greater extent when their participation was introduced as being highly relevant. Implications for the design of xMOOCs are discussed.

Heading Right and Judging Harsher

The term right may imply different meanings, for example, right can be the direction opposite to left, but right can also mean the opposite of wrong. In three experiments, we investigated whether orientation toward the right versus left direction can influence how individuals judge situational moral transgressions. Mental spatial orientation was manipulated by placing the text of moral transgressions on the left versus right side of the screen (Experiment 1) or by presenting different landscape pictures depicting paths that either lead to the left versus to the right (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiment 3, we also manipulated participants’ physical spatial orientation. Results confirmed our main prediction that a mental rightward (vs. leftward) orientation can trigger relatively harsher moral judgments.

Sozial-kognitive Aspekte von Entscheidungen

In der Psychologie sprechen wir von einer Entscheidung, wenn eine praferenzielle Wahl zwischen wenigstens zwei Optionen mit einem Mindestmas an subjektiv wahrgenommener Wahlfreiheit getroffen wird. Dabei kann die Entscheidung das Unterlassen eines bestimmten Verhaltens oder auch das Ausfuhren einer spezifischen Handlung bedeuten bzw.