What's Context Got to Do with It? Comparative Difficulty of Test Questions Influences Metacognition and Corrected Scores for Formula‐scored Exams

Summary: On formula‐scored exams students receive points and penalties for correct and incorrect answers, respectively, but they can avoid the penalty by withholding incorrect answers. However, test‐takers have difficulty strategically regulating their accuracy and often set an overly conservative metacognitive response bias (e.g., Higham, 2007). The current experiments extended these findings by exploring whether the comparative difficulty of surrounding test questions (i.e., easy vs. hard)—a factor unrelated to the knowledge being tested—impacts metacognitive response bias for medium‐difficulty test questions. Comparative difficulty had no significant influence on participants' ability to choose correct answers for medium questions, but it did affect willingness to report answers and confidence ratings. This difference carried over to corrected scores (scores after penalties are applied) when comparative difficulty was manipulated within‐subjects: Scores were higher in the hard condition. Results are discussed in terms of implications for interpreting formula‐scored tests and underlying mechanisms of performance.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What triggers prosocial effort? A positive feedback loop between positive activities,kindness, and well-being

Across two studies, we found evidence supporting a positive feedback loop between positive activities, kindness and well-being. In Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to one of four distinct positive activities (versus a neutral writing activity) before spending three weeks engaging in kind acts. We found that the positive activities served as triggers – that is, they predicted greater prosocial effort, which in turn predicted greater well-being immediately following the intervention and at a two-week follow-up. In Study 2, we explored the specific effects of a gratitude trigger, and extended the intervention period to six weeks. Although, we did not replicate the direct effect of the gratitude trigger on prosocial effort, people who wrote gratitude letters (versus writing about their week) reported relatively greater elevation, which predicted greater prosocial effort during the six weeks. In turn, replicating Study 1, greater effort predicted higher well-being immediately following the study.     

‘New Age’ revisited: By way of entry into restorative justice

The present article pursues striking similarities between the discourse of philosophies and practices often categorised as ‘New Age’, and that of restorative justice. By bringing observations from data material produced in seemingly very different fields of research to a close encounter, a common discourse of transformation is tentatively explored, adding to contemporary works that warn against assuming ‘New Age’ as a sui generis movement or milieu. The article is an exercise in tracing connections across different fields of study, lending support to the claim that such tracing may contribute to the opening out of our topic in ways that have implications for what we can understand as constituting a social environment, for what we can understand as constituting context, for what we can understand as constituting ‘New Age’.