COVID-19 Beliefs, Self-Efficacy and Academic Performance in First-year University Students: Cohort Comparison and Mediation Analysis

Students' learning contexts can influence their learning beliefs and academic performance outcomes; as such, students studying during the COVID-19 outbreak may be at risk of negative impacts on their academic self-efficacy and subject grades compared to other cohorts. They may also have specific beliefs about the impact of COVID-19-related changes on their capacity to perform, with potential consequences for self-efficacy and academic performance. Two weeks after the COVID-19-related transition to online-only learning, 89 first-year psychology students completed a measure of academic self-efficacy and indicated how they thought COVID-19-related changes would impact their capacity to perform in a psychology subject. At the end of the semester, subject grades were obtained from institutional records. Contrary to expectations, neither the self-efficacy beliefs nor the subject grades of the 2020 cohort were significantly different from those of a sample of 2019 first-year psychology students (n = 85). On average, 2020 students believed that COVID-19-related changes to their learning environment had a negative impact on their capacity to perform well. A mediation analysis indicated that students' beliefs about the impact of COVID-19 on their capacity did not directly, or indirectly (via self-efficacy), predict grades. The only significant association in the model was between self-efficacy and grades. Although students reported believing that COVID-19-related changes would negatively impact their capacity to perform, there is little evidence that these beliefs influenced their academic self-efficacy or academic performance or that studying during the COVID-19 outbreak disadvantaged students in comparison with the previous years. A follow-up analysis indicated that self-efficacy was a stronger predictor of grades in the 2020 cohort than in the 2019 cohort. While there may be several unmeasured reasons for cohort differences, one potential interpretation is that, in the context of uncertainty associated with COVID-19, self-efficacy beliefs assumed relatively greater importance in terms of mobilising the resources required to perform well.

Remembering the Super-Typhoon: Some, but Not All, Qualities of First-Hand Survivor Memories of Natural Disaster Are Similar to Near Death Experience and Flashbulb Memory Accounts

The strongest storm in Philippines history, super-typhoon Haiyan, barreled through central Philippines in 2013 and left a high death toll and extensive destruction in its wake. Past studies have investigated Fading Affect Bias (FAB) in extremely negative situations like the death of a loved one and found that the FAB generally occurs in those extreme situations, but this study is the first to assess FAB in first-hand memories for a natural disaster survival situation. The FAB phenomenon is the tendency for emotional intensity associated with negative memories for events to fade over time and emotional intensity for positive events stays relatively stable over time. Researchers collected memories for the super-typhoon from survivors three years after the event. Results showed that negative emotional intensity for the event faded after the event. Emotion in comparison positive memories for non-typhoon events did not fade, and emotion in comparison negative memories faded, following results in several other FAB studies. The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) was used as an initial assessment of mood before the study began, and PANAS scores reliably predicted current emotional intensity scores. Memory vividness and emotional intensity in first-hand accounts of a natural disaster experience behave like vividness and intensity in flashbulb memories, but details in first-hand accounts are similar to the amount of details in memories of near-death experiences. How memory rehearsal behaves in relation to time elapsed since event has yet to be captured for first-hand survival experiences.

Self-Serving Bias in Memories

Abstract. Protecting one’s positive self-image from damage is a fundamental need of human beings. Forgetting is an effective strategy in this respect. Individuals show inferior recall of negative feedback about themselves but unimpaired recognition of self-related negative feedback. This discrepancy may imply that individuals retain negative information but forget that the information is associated with the self. In two experiments, participants judged whether two-character trait adjectives (positive or negative) described themselves or others. Subsequently, they completed old-new judgments (Experiment 2) and attribution tasks (Experiments 1 and 2). Neither old-new recognition nor source guessing bias was influenced by word valence. Participants’ source memory was worse in the negative self-referenced word processing condition than in the other conditions. These results suggest there is a self-serving bias in memory for the connection between valence information and the self.

Challenge and hindrance demands lead to employees' health and behaviours through intrinsic motivation

Based on the job demand-resource theory, this study examined the differential relationships of two types of job demands, challenge and hindrance stressors, with three outcomes: ill health, organizational citizenship behaviour, and work engagement. These relationships were mediated by two personal resources: psychological empowerment and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). Data were collected at two separate points, 2 weeks apart. With 336 full-time U.S. employees, results from path analysis indicated that the challenge stressor, workload, was positively related to psychological empowerment and OBSE, both of which were in turn positively related to good work behaviours as well as negatively related to ill health, an indication that employees experienced physical symptoms and psychological strains. In contrast, hindrance stressors (role stressors and interpersonal conflict) showed the opposite patterns of relationships with these intermediate outcomes, resulting in less empowerment and OBSE. Overall, findings suggested that psychological empowerment and OBSE were important intrinsic motivational mechanisms through which some stressors (especially hindrance demands) can promote employees' favourable work behaviours as well as alleviate the negative health outcomes.

People Use Self-Control to Risk Personal Harm: An Intra-Interpersonal Dilemma

People will smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, binge eat, drink coffee, eat chili peppers, fail tests, steal, ingest illicit drugs, engage in violent and sadistic actions including killing, have sex, and seek to become HIV positive for the sake of interpersonal acceptance. The self-control for personal harm model reconceptualizes behaviors that have both urge and control components as demonstrating either successful or failed self-control, depending on the incipient urge. The model underscores the role of expected social rewards as an important incentive for which people sometimes engage in personally risky and aversive behaviors despite feeling that they would rather avoid the behaviors and attendant harm. Research from diverse perspectives converges to show that risky behaviors, which might on the surface appear to be self-control failures, can in fact require self-control exertion.

On Pancultural Self-Enhancement

Taiwanese participants made better-than-average judgments on collectivistic and individualistic traits, evaluated the personal importance of those traits, and completed measures of psychological adjustment (depression, perceived stress, subjective well-being, and satisfaction with life). Replicating findings from other East Asian samples, participants self-enhanced (i.e., regarded the self as superior to peers) more on collectivistic than individualistic attributes and assigned higher personal importance to the former than the latter. Moreover, better adjusted participants manifested a stronger tendency to self-enhance on personally important attributes. These data are consistent with the view that self-enhancement is a universal human motive that is expressed tactically and at odds with the assertion that self-enhancement is a uniquely Western phenomenon.