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With the worldwide implementation of students' evaluation of teaching (SET), faculty attitudes and trust in students' feedback as well as possible defensive (i.e., self-protective) motivations seem most relevant to the facilitation of the primary organizational goal of SET, namely, teaching improvement. A questionnaire--administered to 2241 faculty members of all ranks in two dozen varied institutions--measured positive attitudes and trust, on the one hand, and beliefs in salient negative faculty SET myths, on the other hand. The most widely-held negative attitudes concerned student fallibilities: vindictiveness; lack of maturity; and negative evaluations of low-achieving students. Despite believing in myths, more than half of the respondents reported trusting SET, thought that it accurately reflected their teaching performance, and considered SET-based feedback useful. A derived index comparing self-evaluations to reported students' evaluations demonstrated that more than a third of the participants rated their own quality of teaching higher than the ratings they reported typically receiving from their students. This 'underestimated' group believed more intensely in SET myths and mistrusted it, which suggests a possible self-protective motivation underlying faculty attitudes. A subgroup of 9% felt strongly underestimated by their students, and a series of comparisons gave clear indications that, for this group of hard-core disgruntled faculty members, the administration of SET questionnaires and the provision of SET feedback are counter-productive. Insights from this research might encourage academic administrations to improve the implementation of SET measurement to increase faculty receptiveness and trust.

In their study about the Dr. Fox lecture, Naftulin, Ware, and Donnelly (1973) claimed that an expressive speaker who delivered an attractive lecture devoid of any content could seduce students into believing that they had learned something significant. Over the decades, the study has been (and still is) cited hundreds of times and used by opponents of the measurement of student evaluations of teachers (SET) as empirical proof for the lack of validity of SET. In an attempt to formulate an alternative explanation of the findings, we replicated the 1973 study, using the original video of the lecture and following the exact methodology of the original study. The alternative explanations tested on several samples of students included (a) acquiescence bias (via a reversed questionnaire and a cognitive remedy); (b) ignorance bias (participants' lack of familiarity with the lecture content); (c) status/prestige bias (presentation of the speaker as a world authority); and (d) a direct measurement of students' reports about their presumed learning. The Dr. Fox effect was indeed consistently replicated in all samples. However, the originally proposed notion of educational seduction leading to presumable (illusory) student learning was ruled out by the empirical findings: Students indeed enjoyed the entertaining lecture, but they had not been seduced into believing they had learned. We discuss the relevance of metacognitive considerations to the inclusion of self-reported learning in this study, and to the wider issue of the incorporation of student learning in the contemporary measurement of SET.

Most institutions of higher education allow students to drop or add courses in the first 2-3 weeks of each term (D&A). Arguing that course cancellation is not merely an administrative issue involving enrollment trends but represents complex decision making processes taken by students, this study investigated antecedents and correlates of course cancellation during a D&A period in 109 elective courses. Student ratings of the teachers (SRT) and characteristics of the syllabi distributed in the first class session were investigated as predictors of course cancellation. Rates of cancellation were significantly predicted from SRT and from syllabus workload difficulty--lower quality teachers (SRT-based) and more difficult courses (syllabus-based) being cancelled more frequently. Analysis of a sub-sample of truly elective, high-priority courses revealed that these correlations were intensified in teacher-centered lecture courses, but nullified in student-centered seminar courses, in which students write independent research papers. The importance of students' course selection and course cancellation as decision making processes, the methodology based on institutional data rather than students' self-reports, and the unique effects of course difficulty on students' decisions were discussed.

Media bias was investigated through the effects of a TV interviewer's preferential behavior on the image of the interviewee in the eyes of the viewers. Judges viewed a political interview with either a friendly or a hostile interviewer then rated their impressions of the interviewed politician, whose behavior was identical in all conditions. The preferential nonverbal behavior of the interviewer (controlling for recognition and comprehension of verbal content) systematically influenced viewers' ratings of the politician. The effect consisted mainly of damage to the politician in the hostile interviewer condition. Describing the interviewee as a professor yielded a similar preferential behavior effect. A strong halo effect was identified, but it was ruled out as the mechanism accounting for the interviewer effect.

Wishful thinking (WT) of Israeli voters was measured in the unprecedented event of three failing national elections repeated within one year. WT is considered as Type 1 fast/intuitive thinking leading to bias. A novel method for measuring WT – including relevant campaign information and distinguishing between "WT for self" and "WT for others" – was introduced. WT components of voters in leading and trailing camps were compared across the three elections to examine whether patterns would be consistent or haphazard. Despite the presumed uncontrolled nature of WT, the patterns were not haphazard but rather consistent. We also tried to debias WT by applying a novel variation of incentive intervention to shift respondents from fast thinking to slow, rational Type 2 thinking. Unlike past studies, the method was extremely effective in debiasing WT and leading to realistic predictions. However, this was true only for self-WT and not for WT for others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensitivity to verbal and nonverbal communication was rated in brief samples of behavior by the following groups in Israel: (1) 39 fourth graders; (2) 37 seventh graders; (3) 33 tenth graders; (4) 23 teachers-in-training; and (5) 19 experienced elementary school teachers. Both students and teachers could detect differential expectancy information. (SLD)

Perceptions of 520 Israeli seventh graders of teachers' differential behavior toward high and low achievers were compared with those of 17 teachers themselves. In a second experiment, teachers received feedback, which decreased the gap between students' and teachers' perceptions, although contrasting perceptions of emotional support given to low achievers persisted. (SLD)

The teacher's pet (TP) phenomenon was investigated in 80 Israeli fifth grade classrooms (23 religious and 57 secular). Questionnaires were administered to 2,079 students (49 percent female) and 80 female teachers. TPs were identified in 80 percent of the classrooms, female more often than male, and good students. (SLD)

The article discusses Israeli television journalists' nonverbal behavior in interviews. Nonverbal preferential behavior included smiling, rhythmical beating hand movements, leaning forward, sarcasm, and attempts to control the interviewee.

WISHFUL THINKING AMONG VOTERS When voters are asked to predict the outcomes of a forthcoming election, they manifest wishful thinking if their predictions vary in an optimistic direction as a [...]

Wishful thinking (WT)--defined as predicting a more favorable outcome for a preferred team--was investigated in soccer stadia and betting stations in Israel. High levels of WT were found in all contexts investigated. As hypothesized, the intensity of WT varied between contexts as a function of the 'legitimacy' of emotionalism and subjectivity, and within each context as a function of self-defined levels of fanhood and preference. An explicit instruction to be objective did not reduce WT in predicting game outcomes. Paid betting forms represented an ecologically valid voluntary behavior most contradictory of wishful thinking, since bettors are strongly motivated to be objective and impartial. The results showed that fans could not overcome their wishful thinking, betting emotionally and against their financial interest.

Reviews research on the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy and how it affects education. Finds that teachers obtain superior performance from students of whom they have favorable expectations. These effects occur not only in classrooms, but in clinics, labs, and workshops, and in athletics. (MD)

Members of two unstructured small groups, participants in one and observers in the other, rated all interventions by the trainer for contribution to their learning. Participants and observers had a similar learning profile. Differences between the learning of participants and observers were found for clusters of interventions emphasizing trainer's authority, members' responsibility, and members' abstract versus concrete anxiety. (Author/NB)