The ability to learn cause-effect relations from experience is critical for humans to behave adaptively -- to choose causes that bring about desired effects. However, traditional experiments on experience-based learning involve events that are artificially compressed in time so that all learning occurs over the course of minutes. These paradigms…

Knowing the temporal direction of causal relations is critical for producing desired outcomes and explaining events. Existing evidence suggests that children start to grasp that causes must precede their effects (the temporal priority principle) by age 3; however, whether younger children also understand this has, to our knowledge, not previously…

In mixed methods approaches, statistical models are used to identify "nested" cases for intensive, small-n investigation for a range of purposes, including notably the examination of causal mechanisms. This article shows that under a commonsense interpretation of causal effects, large-n models allow no reliable conclusions about effect…

Globally, adolescent self-harm rates remain high, while help-seeking behaviour remains low. School staff are in a position to facilitate access to appropriate care for young people who self-harm (YPS-H), but little is known about gatekeepers' attributions of self-harm or whether these attributions influence the support they provide. This study…

The present study analyzes Imposter Phenomenon (IP) through the lens of three different motivational frameworks. Expectancy Value Theory, Attribution Theory, and Self-Determination Theory were used to study IP among academics. With 72% of participants experiencing frequent or intense IP levels, IP was prevalent among those sampled. Females…

Scholars have paid little attention to the strategies used by parents of gifted children who learn in mixed-abilities classroom when interacting with their teachers. In this research we studied how parents of gifted children in mixed-ability classrooms position themselves with their children's teachers in conflicted situations. By using multiple…

Achievement motivation is a significant contributor to the foreign language learning process. This study explored the achievement perceptions of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who were studying at different higher education institutions with dissimilar degree programs, such as a vocational college, an undergraduate program in a…

Recent research has shown that a religious upbringing renders children receptive to ordinarily impossible outcomes, but the underlying mechanism for this effect remains unclear. Exposure to religious teachings might alter children's basic understanding of causality. Alternatively, religious exposure might only affect children's religious…

Past research has demonstrated that both consequentialist motives (such as deterrence) and deontological motives (such as "just deserts") underlie children's and adults' punitive behavior. But what motives do we ascribe to others who pursue punishment? The present work explores this question by assessing which punitive motives children…

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth (IOED) occurs when people overestimate their ability to explain the causal mechanisms of natural or social processes. Prior research has attributed this metacognitive bias to confounding the understanding of abstract causal patterns with the comprehension of domain-specific mechanisms. However, this explanation…

In this study, we examined 535 primary classroom teachers' causal attributions about challenging behaviour in West Bengal, India. The participants completed a questionnaire that collected information about their perceptions, causal attribution, and proposed strategies to address a range of challenging behaviours that were presented through five…

Psychological research on pseudo-profound bullshit--randomly assembled buzz words plugged into a syntactic structure--has only recently begun. Most such research has focused on dispositional traits, such as thinking styles or political orientation. However, none has investigated contextual factors. In two studies, we introduce a new paradigm by…

Attribute-framing bias reflects people's tendency to evaluate positively framed objects more favorably than the same objects framed negatively. Most theoretical accounts of this bias emphasized the role of positive- and negative-framing valence in the message, disregarding the quantitative information that typically accompanies it. To examine the…

Self-determination theory is one of the most established motivational theories both within second language learning and beyond. This theory has generated several mini-theories, namely: organismic integration theory, cognitive evaluation theory, basic psychological needs theory, goal contents theory, causality orientations theory, and relationships…

Addressing legacies of past injustice is a central concern for transitional justice. It has most commonly been attempted through a 'truth-telling' approach; it is assumed that if the truth of past injustices is made known, then justice can be acted upon within contemporary society. 'Truth telling'--and disciplinary approaches to learning about…