The impact of teacher feedback on students' decisions to stay on or change course after math failure in a Confucian cultural context.

Previous research indicated that instructors holding entity belief tended to judge students to have low ability and provided ability-comforting feedback following math failure. Students receiving such feedback tended to quit and change course, creating a potential decrease in the pool of students pursuing math related fields. In Confucian heritage cultures (CHCs), the ideal society is primarily based on fulfillment of duties. Thus, the ability-based findings, derived from WEIRD samples, may not apply to duty-based CHCs. We hypothesized that CHC's teachers holding obligation belief tend to attribute students' failure to lack of duty fulfillment and provide duty-based feedback, including duty-comforting and duty-advising feedback, which motivates students to stay on rather than change course. To validate our hypothesis, we conducted three scenario experiments with 160 college students with teaching experiences, 273 high school students, and 369 pre-service teachers in Taiwan. Results showed that while ability-based paradigm may be culture-free, duty-based paradigm seems to be culture-bound. Consistent with previous research, teachers with entity belief tended to give ability-comforting feedback, pushing students to pursue non-math related fields. In contrast, teachers with obligation belief were likely to offer duty-comforting and duty-advising feedback, contributing to students' persistent pursuit in math. Furthermore, three fifths of teachers were inclined to provide ability-comforting, duty-comforting and duty-advising feedback concurrently, thus putting students in an unpleasant predicament that might be detrimental to their psychological well-being. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

To mask or not to mask: Debunking the myths of mask-wearing during COVID-19 across cultures.

Mask-wearing is the simplest yet most effective preventive behavior during COVID-19. However, it has sparked great controversy, particularly in America. Little is known about what psychosocial factors predict people's decision to mask. This research challenges three myths about mask-wearing. First, does mask-wearing provide a false sense of security? Second, is knowledge of COVID-19 a more robust predictor than political ideology of mask-wearing behavior? Third, does resistance to masks reflect anti-authoritarianism or a lack of trust in government? With nationally representative samples across two cultures (N = 1,121), findings reveal a significant positive correlation between mask-wearing and other preventive behaviors. Moreover, knowledge of COVID-19 and trust in government significantly predicted mask-wearing. Implications of the results are also discussed in the cross-cultural context. Critically, findings could provide practical implications for public education and policymaking by uncovering how to more effectively promote compliance with recommended preventive behaviors during our ongoing struggle with COVID-19.

To approach or to avoid: The quadripolar model of achievement motivation revisited in a Confucian-heritage context.

Academic challenges and failure are inevitable in pursuit of higher education. According to the self-worth theory, trying hard but failing implies low ability that would be a threat to personal worth, thus preventing students from approaching academic challenges. Nevertheless, previous studies have shown that students in the Confucian-heritage contexts (CHCs) tend to persist rather than quit in the face of academic failure. According to the role obligation theory of self-cultivation (ROT), the CHC learners would perceive academic failure from personal and interpersonal perspectives. The former refers to personal obligations to exert oneself toward the ultimate good, and the latter refers to fulfilling filial obligations to parents by achieving academic excellence. Given the fundamental differences in learners' perceptions of academic failure between the CHCs and the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) contexts, this study examined the applicability of the quadripolar model of achievement motivation based on the self-worth theory in a CHC higher education institution. Results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported a two-factor model of fear of failure, including a personal and an interpersonal subfactor. Latent class analysis (LCA) showed that apart from the four existing categories of the quadripolar model, two additional CHC categories emerged and constituted half of the sample. The two CHC categories demonstrated different learner characteristics compared with their corresponding quadripolar categories in terms of levels of emotional distress and academic risk-taking tendency. The results may help debunk the myth that learner characteristics in the CHCs are identical to those observed in the WEIRD contexts. The fundamental differences in fear of failure further indicated the inadequacy of the self-worth theory in explaining achievement motivation in the CHCs where relationalism and role obligations are significant parts of the cultural traditions.

High-School Teachers' Beliefs about Effort and Their Attitudes toward Struggling and Smart Students in a Confucian Society.

Previous studies conducted in Western societies showed that instructors' beliefs about intellectual ability affected their attitudes toward students. However, in many East Asian societies influenced by Confucian culture, teachers not only hold beliefs of ability but also two kinds of beliefs about effort: obligation-oriented belief (i.e., believing that effort-making is a student's role obligation) and improvement-oriented belief (i.e., believing that effort can conquer the limitations of one's ability). This study aimed to investigate the relationships between teachers' effort beliefs and their attitudes toward favoritism, praise, and expectations toward struggling and smart students. The participants were 151 Taiwanese high-school teachers. Results of Structure Equation Modeling showed that (1) teachers' obligation-oriented belief about effort was positively correlated with their favoritism, praise, short-term and long-term expectations of struggling students, but negatively correlated with their favoritism and praise of smart students, (2) teachers' improvement-orientated belief about effort was negatively correlated with their short-term expectation of smart students and favoritism of struggling students, but positively correlated with their praise of smart students, and (3) the entity theory of intelligence was negatively correlated with favoritism and praise of struggling students, but positively correlated with favoritism of smart students. The theoretical and cultural implications are discussed.

The Mediating Role of Self-Exertion on the Effects of Effort on Learning Virtues and Emotional Distress in Academic Failure in a Confucian Context.

Previous studies have found that in East Asian Confucian societies, hardworking students are often trapped in a dilemma of enjoying a positive moral image while suffering from emotional distress due to academic failure. This study intends to further explore whether the cultural-specific belief in self-exertion acts as a psychological mechanism to lessen these students' negative emotions. A group of 288 college students in Taiwan were administered a questionnaire to record their responses to past academic failures. The results from structural equation modeling showed that self-exertion functioned as a mediator between the effects of effort on learning virtues and emotional distress. Self-exertion to fulfill one's duty to oneself positively mediated the effect of effort on learning virtues, whereas self-exertion to fulfill one's duty to one's parents negatively mediated the effect of effort on emotional distress. Theoretical and cultural implications are further discussed.

Taiwanese students' self-attributions for two types of achievement goals.

Previous studies of achievement motivations have focused on the patterns of self-attribution with little consideration of the effects of achievement goals. In the present study, the authors investigated Taiwanese students' self-attribution for achievement goals mainly on the basis of autonomous interest (i.e., personal goals) and on social expectation (i.e., vertical goals). The authors administered self-developed scenario simulation questionnaires to undergraduate and graduate participants in 2 studies. The results showed that (a) in pursuit of personal goals, participants tended to attribute success to internal factors and failure to external factors and (b) in pursuit of vertical goals, participants tended to attribute their failure to lack of effort. The authors further discuss the theoretical implications of these findings under a cultural context.