Developmental trajectories of achievement emotions in mathematics during adolescence.

This study examined how adolescents' emotions in mathematics develop over time. Growth curve modeling was applied to longitudinal data collected annually from 2002 to 2006 (Grades 5-9; N = 3425 German adolescents; Mage = 11.7, 15.6 years at the first and last waves, respectively; 50.0% female). Results indicated that enjoyment and pride decreased over time (Glass's Δs = -.86, -.71). In contrast, negative emotions exhibited more complex patterns: Anger, boredom, and hopelessness increased (Δs = .52, .79, .26), shame decreased (Δ = -.12), and anxiety remained stable (Δ = .00). These change trajectories of emotions were associated with change trajectories of perceived control, intrinsic value, achievement value, and achievement in mathematics. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Mathematics Motivation in Students With Low Cognitive Ability: A Longitudinal Study of Motivation and Relations With Effort, Self-Regulation, and Grades.

Expectancy-value theory (EVT) is a popular framework to understand and improve students' motivation. Unfortunately, limited research has verified whether EVT predictions generalize to students with low levels of cognitive ability. This study relies on Grade 5 and 8 data from 177 students with low levels of cognitive ability and a matched sample of 177 students with average to high cognitive ability from the German "Project for the Analysis of Learning and Achievement in Mathematics." Results showed that students with low levels of cognitive ability were able to differentiate EVT components. Both groups demonstrated a similar downward developmental trend in motivation from early to middle adolescence, and similar relations between EVT components and levels of efforts, self-regulation, and mathematics class grades.

Facial blushing influences perceived embarrassment and related social functional evaluations.

Facial blushing involves a reddening of the face elicited in situations involving unwanted social attention. Such situations include being caught committing a social transgression, which is typically considered embarrassing. While recent research has demonstrated that facial redness can influence social evaluations, including emotional states such as perceived anger, the influence of blushing on social perceptions related to embarrassment or social transgression has yet to be investigated. Across three experiments, we manipulated the redness of neutral faces (Exp. 1) and faces displaying different emotional expressions (Exps. 2 and 3), and had participants evaluate perceived embarrassment, apology sincerity, and likeliness to forgive a transgression for each set of stimuli. Results indicated that redder (relative to baseline) faces influenced perceived embarrassment, apology sincerity, and likeliness to forgive a transgression. We discuss the implications in the context of a social functional account of facial colour in emotion expression and perception.

The Influence of Decisional and Emotional Forgiveness on Attributions.

Research on forgiveness suggests that forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping process important for clinical settings as it can promote both physical and mental health (Worthington et al., 2005; Witvliet and McCullough, 2007). Investigating antecedents of forgiveness, empirical studies and theoretical models propose that attributions influence forgiveness. However, hardly any studies or theoretical models have ever looked at the possibility that this relationship may be reciprocal in nature and whether forgiveness also impacts a victim's attributions has not been investigated. The present, highly powered (n = 969) study seeks to fill this gap and provides the first empirical support that emotional forgiveness has a strong influence on subsequent attributions. Specifically, individuals, who have emotionally forgiven a transgression, hold the transgressor less responsible for the offense compared to those in the decisional forgiveness and control condition. Moreover, the findings conceptually replicate previous research (Lichtenfeld et al., 2015) by demonstrating that emotional, but not decisional forgiveness affects cognition and, thus, emotional and decisional forgiveness should be treated as distinct facets in the forgiveness process. Implications of these results for clinical and health psychology are discussed.

Stress experience and performance during an oral exam: the role of self-efficacy, threat appraisals, anxiety, and cortisol.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: High self-efficacy may reduce emotional and physiological stress responses in the context of an examination. The present study investigated how these stress responses develop on an exam day, and sequential indirect effects between self-efficacy, threat appraisals, stress responses and performance. DESIGN AND METHODS: The sample comprised 92 students (46 women). Self-efficacy, threat appraisals and state anxiety were assessed on a control day one week before an oral exam. Additionally, anxiety was assessed three times on the exam day. Salivary cortisol samples were collected at all time points. RESULTS: Pre-exam anxiety and cortisol decreased until grades were announced. For both responses, greater levels were related to a steeper decline. However, changes in anxiety and cortisol were unrelated. Self-efficacy was negatively related to threat appraisals and anxiety on the control day. Greater threat appraisals were associated with higher pre-exam anxiety and a steeper anxiety decrease on the exam day, which in turn, was related to better performance. CONCLUSIONS: High levels of self-efficacy may reduce threat appraisals and anxiety in the lead up to an exam, which are related to the intensity and decline of anxiety on the exam day. A steeper decline of anxiety may be beneficial to performance.

Correction: An International Consensus Definition of the Wish to Hasten Death and Its Related Factors.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146184.].

Achievement Emotions and Academic Performance: Longitudinal Models of Reciprocal Effects.

A reciprocal effects model linking emotion and achievement over time is proposed. The model was tested using five annual waves of the Project for the Analysis of Learning and Achievement in Mathematics (PALMA) longitudinal study, which investigated adolescents' development in mathematics (Grades 5-9; N = 3,425 German students; mean starting age = 11.7 years; representative sample). Structural equation modeling showed that positive emotions (enjoyment, pride) positively predicted subsequent achievement (math end-of-the-year grades and test scores), and that achievement positively predicted these emotions, controlling for students' gender, intelligence, and family socioeconomic status. Negative emotions (anger, anxiety, shame, boredom, hopelessness) negatively predicted achievement, and achievement negatively predicted these emotions. The findings were robust across waves, achievement indicators, and school tracks, highlighting the importance of emotions for students' achievement and of achievement for the development of emotions.

Breaking the double-edged sword of effort/trying hard: Developmental equilibrium and longitudinal relations among effort, achievement, and academic self-concept.

Ever since the classic research of Nicholls (1976) and others, effort has been recognized as a double-edged sword: while it might enhance achievement, it undermines academic self-concept (ASC). However, there has not been a thorough evaluation of the longitudinal reciprocal effects of effort, ASC, and achievement, in the context of modern self-concept theory and statistical methodology. Nor have there been developmental equilibrium tests of whether these effects are consistent across the potentially volatile early-to-middle adolescence. Hence, focusing on mathematics, we evaluate reciprocal effects models (REMs) over the first 4 years of secondary school (grades 5-8), relating effort, achievement (test scores and school grades), ASC, and ASC × Effort interactions for a representative sample of 3,144 German students (Mage = 11.75 years at Wave 1). ASC, effort, and achievement were positively correlated at each wave, and there was a clear pattern of positive reciprocal positive effects among ASC, test scores, and school grades-each contributing to the other, after controlling for the prior effects of all others. There was an asymmetrical pattern of effects for effort that is consistent with the double-edged sword premise: prior school grades had positive effects on subsequent effort, but prior effort had nonsignificant or negative effects on subsequent grades and ASC. However, on the basis of a synergistic application of new theory and methodology, we predicted and found a significant ASC × Effort interaction, such that prior effort had more positive effects on subsequent ASC and school grades when prior ASC was high-thus providing a key to breaking the double-edged sword. (PsycINFO Database Record

An International Consensus Definition of the Wish to Hasten Death and Its Related Factors.

BACKGROUND: The desire for hastened death or wish to hasten death (WTHD) that is experienced by some patients with advanced illness is a complex phenomenon for which no widely accepted definition exists. This lack of a common conceptualization hinders understanding and cooperation between clinicians and researchers. The aim of this study was to develop an internationally agreed definition of the WTHD. METHODS: Following an exhaustive literature review, a modified nominal group process and an international, modified Delphi process were carried out. The nominal group served to produce a preliminary definition that was then subjected to a Delphi process in which 24 experts from 19 institutions from Europe, Canada and the USA participated. Delphi responses and comments were analysed using a pre-established strategy. FINDINGS: All 24 experts completed the three rounds of the Delphi process, and all the proposed statements achieved at least 79% agreement. Key concepts in the final definition include the WTHD as a reaction to suffering, the fact that such a wish is not always expressed spontaneously, and the need to distinguish the WTHD from the acceptance of impending death or from a wish to die naturally, although preferably soon. The proposed definition also makes reference to possible factors related to the WTHD. CONCLUSIONS: This international consensus definition of the WTHD should make it easier for clinicians and researchers to share their knowledge. This would foster an improved understanding of the phenomenon and help in developing strategies for early therapeutic intervention.

Don't aim too high for your kids: Parental overaspiration undermines students' learning in mathematics.

Previous research has suggested that parents' aspirations for their children's academic attainment can have a positive influence on children's actual academic performance. Possible negative effects of parental overaspiration, however, have found little attention in the psychological literature. Employing a dual-change score model with longitudinal data from a representative sample of German school children and their parents (N = 3,530; Grades 5 to 10), we showed that parental aspiration and children's mathematical achievement were linked by positive reciprocal relations over time. Importantly, we also found that parental aspiration that exceeded their expectation (i.e., overaspiration) had negative reciprocal relations with children's mathematical achievement. These results were fairly robust after controlling for a variety of demographic and cognitive variables such as children's gender, age, intelligence, school type, and family socioeconomic status. The results were also replicated with an independent sample of U.S. parents and their children. These findings suggest that unrealistically high parental aspiration can be detrimental for children's achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record

Forgive and Forget: Differences between Decisional and Emotional Forgiveness.

To forgive and forget is a well-known idiom, which has rarely been looked at empirically. In the current experiment, we investigated differences between emotional and decisional forgiveness on forgetting. The present study provides the first empirical support that emotional forgiveness has a strong influence on subsequent incidental forgetting. Specifically, our results demonstrate that emotional forgiveness leads to substantially higher levels of forgetting in respect to offense relevant traits compared to both decisional forgiveness and no forgiveness. This provides evidence for our hypothesized effect that only individuals who have emotionally forgiven a transgression, and not those who just decided to forgive, subsequently forget offense relevant traits attributed to the transgressor.

Differential binding of colors to objects in memory: red and yellow stick better than blue and green.

Both evolutionary considerations and recent research suggest that the color red serves as a signal indicating an object's importance. However, until now, there is no evidence that this signaling function of red is also reflected in human memory. To examine the effect of red on memory, we conducted four experiments in which we presented objects colored in four different colors (red, green, blue, and yellow) and measured later memory for the presence of an object and for the color of an object. Across experiments, we varied the type of objects (words vs. pictures), task complexity (single objects vs. multiple objects in visual scenes), and intentionality of encoding (intentional vs. incidental learning). Memory for the presence of an object was not influenced by color. However, in all four experiments, memory for the color of an object depended on color type and was particularly high for red and yellow-colored objects and particularly low for green-colored objects, indicating that the binding of colors into object memory representations varies as a function of color type. Analyzing the observers' confidence in their color memories revealed that color not only influenced objective memory performance but also subjective confidence. Subjective confidence judgments differentiated well between correct and incorrect color memories for red-colored objects, but poorly for green-colored objects. Our findings reveal a previously unknown color effect which may be of considerable interest for both basic color research and applied settings like eyewitness testimony in which memory for color features is relevant. Furthermore, our results indicate that feature binding in memory is not a uniform process by which any attended feature is automatically bound into unitary memory representations. Rather, memory binding seems to vary across different subtypes of features, a finding that supports recent research showing that object features are stored in memory rather independently from each other.

Potential-based achievement goals.

BACKGROUND: Self-based achievement goals use one's own intrapersonal trajectory as a standard of evaluation, and this intrapersonal trajectory may be grounded in one's past (past-based goals) or one's future potential (potential-based goals). Potential-based goals have been overlooked in the literature to date. AIMS: The primary aim of the present research was to address this oversight within the context of the 3 × 2 achievement goal framework. SAMPLES: The Study 1 sample was 381 US undergraduates; the Study 2 sample was 310 US undergraduates. METHODS: In Study 1, we developed scales to assess potential-approach and potential-avoidance goals and tested their factorial validity with exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. In Study 2, we used confirmatory factor analysis to test both the separability of past-based and potential-based goals and their higher order integration within the self-based category. RESULTS: Study 1 supported the factorial validity of the potential-approach and potential-avoidance goal scales. Study 2 supported the separability of past-based and potential-based goals, as well as their higher order integration within the self-based category. CONCLUSIONS: This research documents the utility of the proposed distinction and paves the way for subsequent work on antecedent and consequences of potential-approach and potential-avoidance goals. It highlights the importance of focusing on distinct types of growth-based goals in the achievement goal literature.

Switching from approach to withdrawal is easier than vice versa.

A fundamental property of emotional responses is a change in action tendencies that allow the individual to cope with the situation. Most basically, there are two types of behaviour one can switch to when responding emotionally: approach or withdrawal. The present study examined whether the ability to switch to approach or withdrawal depends on the type of behaviour shown before. Using familiar (Experiment 1) and unfamiliar (Experiment 2) neutral stimuli, we first show that switching from approach to withdrawal is generally easier than vice versa. In Experiment 3, we demonstrate that this holds true even when participants respond to emotional stimuli that typically elicit strong approach or withdrawal tendencies. These results indicate that there is a fundamental asymmetry in the ability to switch from approach to withdrawal or vice versa. As shown in Experiment 3, this asymmetry may represent a serious confound in many previous studies examining the link between stimulus valence and associated action tendencies, suggesting that the link between positive stimuli and approach tendencies may be stronger, and the link between negative stimuli and withdrawal tendencies weaker, than previously believed.

Red - take a closer look.

Color research has shown that red is associated with avoidance of threat (e.g., failure) or approach of reward (e.g., mating) depending on the context in which it is perceived. In the present study we explored one central cognitive process that might be involved in the context dependency of red associations. According to our theory, red is supposed to highlight the relevance (importance) of a goal-related stimulus and correspondingly intensifies the perceivers' attentional reaction to it. Angry and happy human compared to non-human facial expressions were used as goal-relevant stimuli. The data indicate that the color red leads to enhanced attentional engagement to angry and happy human facial expressions (compared to neutral ones) - the use of non-human facial expressions does not bias attention. The results are discussed with regard to the idea that red induced attentional biases might explain the red-context effects on motivation.

Predicting long-term growth in students' mathematics achievement: the unique contributions of motivation and cognitive strategies.

This research examined how motivation (perceived control, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation), cognitive learning strategies (deep and surface strategies), and intelligence jointly predict long-term growth in students' mathematics achievement over 5 years. Using longitudinal data from six annual waves (Grades 5 through 10; Mage  = 11.7 years at baseline; N = 3,530), latent growth curve modeling was employed to analyze growth in achievement. Results showed that the initial level of achievement was strongly related to intelligence, with motivation and cognitive strategies explaining additional variance. In contrast, intelligence had no relation with the growth of achievement over years, whereas motivation and learning strategies were predictors of growth. These findings highlight the importance of motivation and learning strategies in facilitating adolescents' development of mathematical competencies.

Fertile green: green facilitates creative performance.

The present research sought to extend the nascent literature on color and psychological functioning by examining whether perception of the color green facilitates creativity. In four experiments, we demonstrated that a brief glimpse of green prior to a creativity task enhances creative performance. This green effect was observed using both achromatic (white, gray) and chromatic (red, blue) contrast colors that were carefully matched on nonhue properties, and using both picture-based and word-based assessments of creativity. Participants were not aware of the purpose of the experiment, and null effects were obtained on participants' self-reported mood and positive activation. These findings indicate that green has implications beyond aesthetics and suggest the need for sustained empirical work on the functional meaning of green.

Always look on the broad side of life: happiness increases the breadth of sensory memory.

Research has shown that positive affect increases the breadth of information processing at several higher stages of information processing, such as attentional selection or knowledge activation. In the present study, we examined whether these affective influences are already present at the level of transiently storing incoming information in sensory memory, before attentional selection takes place. After inducing neutral, happy, or sad affect, participants performed an iconic memory task which measures visual sensory memory. In all conditions, iconic memory performance rapidly decreased with increasing delay between stimulus presentation and test, indicating that affect did not influence the decay of iconic memory. However, positive affect increased the amount of incoming information stored in iconic memory. In particular, our results showed that this occurs due to an elimination of the spatial bias typically observed in iconic memory. Whereas performance did not differ at positions where observers in the neutral and negative conditions showed the highest performance, positive affect enhanced performance at all positions where observers in the neutral and negative conditions were relatively "blind." These findings demonstrate that affect influences the breadth of information processing already at earliest processing stages, suggesting that affect may produce an even more fundamental shift in information processing than previously believed.

Red, rank, and romance in women viewing men.

In many nonhuman species of vertebrates, females are attracted to red on male conspecifics. Red is also a signal of male status in many nonhuman vertebrate species, and females show a mating preference for high-status males. These red-attraction and red-status links have been found even when red is displayed on males artificially. In the present research, we document parallels between human and nonhuman females' response to male red. Specifically, in a series of 7 experiments we demonstrate that women perceive men to be more attractive and sexually desirable when seen on a red background and in red clothing, and we additionally show that status perceptions are responsible for this red effect. The influence of red appears to be specific to women's romantic attraction to men: Red did not influence men's perceptions of other men, nor did it influence women's perceptions of men's overall likability, agreeableness, or extraversion. Participants showed no awareness that the research focused on the influence of color. These findings indicate that color not only has aesthetic value but can carry meaning and impact psychological functioning in subtle, important, and provocative ways.

Mediation of the negative effect of red on intellectual performance.

This research examines the hypothesis that an attentional process grounded in avoidance motivation-local relative to global processing-mediates the negative effect of red on intellectual performance. This hypothesis was tested in a series of experiments using two approaches to documenting mediation. Experiment 1 established that the perception of red undermines IQ test performance. Experiments 2a and 2b documented mediation via the experimental causal chain approach, and Experiment 3 documented mediation via the measurement of mediation approach. This represents the first demonstration of a mediational process in the domain of color psychology. A call is made to broaden priming research to include color stimuli.