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BackgroundHip and knee osteoarthritis is ranked as the 11th highest contributor to global disability. Exercise is a core treatment in osteoarthritis. The model for physical activity–related health competence describes possibilities to empower patients to perform physical exercises in the best possible health-promoting manner while taking into account their own physical condition. Face-to-face supervision is the gold standard for exercise guidance. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate whether instruction and guidance via a digital app is not inferior to supervision by a physiotherapist with regard to movement quality, control competence for physical training, and exercise-specific self-efficacy. MethodsPatients with clinically diagnosed hip osteoarthritis were recruited via print advertisements, emails and flyers. The intervention consisted of two identical training sessions with one exercise for mobility, two for strength, and one for balance. One session was guided by a physiotherapist and the other was guided by a fully automated tablet computer-based app. Both interventions took place at a university hospital. Outcomes were assessor-rated movement quality, and self-reported questionnaires on exercise-specific self-efficacy and control competence for physical training. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two treatment sequences. One sequence started with the app in the first session followed by the physiotherapist in the second session after a minimum washout phase of 27 days (AP group) and the other sequence occurred in the reverse order (PA group). Noninferiority was defined as a between-treatment effect (gIG)

Background: The use of e-exams in higher education is increasing. However, the role of student diversity in the acceptance of e-exams is an under-researched topic. In the current study, we considered student diversity in terms of three sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, and second language) and three dispositional student characteristics (computer anxiety, test anxiety, and technology openness). Objectives: The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between student diversity and acceptance of e-exams. Methods: Our research combined cross-sectional analyses (N = 1639) with data from a natural experiment on the introduction of e-exams versus the established paper-pencil exams (N = 626) and used both self-report and institutional data. Sociodemographic and dispositional characteristics were indirectly related to pre-exam acceptance via expectancy variables from the Technology Acceptance Model framework. Results and Conclusions: Comparisons of post-exam acceptance showed that practical experience with the e-exam led to a significant increase in e-exam acceptance, and that students with low openness toward technology particularly benefited from this effect. Students' exam performance (i.e., grades) was unrelated to the exam format or their pre-exam acceptance of the e-exam format, and this was true across students' sociodemographic and dispositional characteristics. Takeaway: Student diversity plays a role in e-exam acceptance, but its influence is mitigated by first-hand experience with e-exams. The practical implications for higher education institutions aiming to implement e-exams are discussed.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked protests around the globe. Most of Europe had – luckily – not seen violent conflict of this scale on their doorstep for more than 30 years. For Germany, the period was even longer. Being confronted with news about the war drove thousands of German citizens to the streets. In passionate protests, they made various demands of their government. Herein, we investigate the links between Germans' emotions and their readiness to engage in such protests. Drawing on collective action research, we predicted that anger and sympathy would correlate positively with Germans' protest readiness. Given the context and public debate, we predicted that fear should also correlate with protest readiness. Two surveys (total N = 905) conducted with residents of Germany – one day after the invasion and at its first anniversary – supported our hypotheses. We consistently found that the more sympathy and anger respondents experienced, the greater their readiness to protest. Fear explained variance beyond sympathy and anger in two cases and in an information‐seeking measure of protest readiness: Greater fear correlated with a higher interest in demonstrations advocating peace negotiations and a lower interest in demonstrations calling for solidarity with Ukraine. These findings underscore the links between sympathy, anger, fear, and the readiness to protest in response to the contemporary crisis that is the war in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societies are increasingly divided about political issues such as migration or counteracting climate change. This attitudinal polarization is the basis for intergroup conflict and prevents societal progress in addressing pressing challenges. Research on attitude change should provide an answer regarding how people might be persuaded to move away from the extremes to take a moderate stance. However, persuasive communication often most strongly affects those who hold a moderate attitude or are undecided. More importantly, barely any research has explicitly aimed at mitigating extreme attitudes and behavioral tendencies. Addressing this gap, this article summarizes research demonstrating that (different types of) intraindividual conflicts might be a means to mitigate polarized attitudes. Goal conflicts, cognitive conflicts, counterfactual thinking, and paradoxical thinking facilitate cognitive flexibility. This, in turn, seems to initiate the consideration of alternative stances and mitigate the polarization of attitudes. We discuss the limitations of the existing research and the potential of this approach for interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In 2020, the Division of Social Psychology of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) published 11 methodological recommendations for improving the quality, replicability, and transparency of social psychological research. We evaluate these recommendations in a quantitative and qualitative survey conducted with members of the division (N = 54). Most – but not all – recommendations are well-known and understood by these members of the division. For 73% of the recommendations, researchers indicated that they tend to apply them in their research. Perceived behavioral control was the strongest predictor of adherence and was generally high (82%). In the open comments, challenges and suggestions for improvement were expressed. Overall, the implementation of the recommendations progresses and respective norms emerge, but substantial challenges remain to be solved requiring collective efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group members frequently face violations of group-based expectations by in- and outgroup members' behaviour. Responses to such violations include confronting the violators and escaping from the group. The current article presents a novel, integrative model explaining how and why violations of group-based expectations elicit these reactions. We argue that group members experience violations of expectations as threats to their social selves, which motivates them to react at all. Crucially adding to extant theorising, we argue that how group members react depends on their perceived control, a largely overlooked factor thus far. Herein, we synthesise our model's empirical basis, which spans studies on different violations (violations of ingroup norms, norms for cooperation, and expectations based on political ideology) and different group contexts (e.g., attitude-based lab groups, learning groups, Facebook groups). Moreover, we discuss boundary conditions for the model's applicability and its potential for integration with classic research on social identity management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to improve attitudes towards digital technology. To this end, we compared two ways of introducing technology: an enactive mastery versus a vicarious experience. The former aimed at improving employees' self-efficacy to use a robotic technology and, thereby, their attitudes towards it. We examined three attitude dimensions that are relevant when implementing new technology: (1) technology enthusiasm, (2) resistance to change, and (3) job insecurity. We also tested for self-efficacy as mediator between experience and attitudes. The results of the pre-registered quasi-experiment with operators working in the automotive sector (N = 106) supported our hypothesis: Enactive mastery experience, in which workers actively engaged with the technology, led to a higher technology enthusiasm as compared to vicarious experience. This effect was explained by an increase in self-efficacy. Additional analyses revealed that enactive mastery experience also led to lower resistance to change, but not to lower job insecurity. The findings highlight how organisations can apply a simple, yet effective strategy to successfully implement technology at work and motivate employees to use it. They also reveal self-efficacy as the underlying psychological mechanism of enactive mastery, thereby providing an important starting point for designing interventions in organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the emerging field of voice shopping with quasi-sales agents like Amazon's Alexa, we investigated the influence of perceived human-AI relationships (i.e., authority ranking, market pricing, peer bonding) on (voice-)shopping intentions. In our cross-sectional survey among experienced voice shoppers (N = 423), we tested hypotheses specifically differentiating voice shopping for low- and high-involvement products. The results emphasized the importance of socio-emotional elements (i.e., peer bonding) for voice shopping for high-involvement products. While calculative decision-making (i.e., market pricing) was less relevant, the master-servant relationship perception (i.e., authority ranking) was important in low-involvement shopping. An exploratory analysis of users' desired benefits of voice shopping reinforces our claims. The outcomes are relevant for conversation designers, business developers, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversational AI (e.g., Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa) is present in many people's everyday life and, at the same time, becomes more and more capable of solving more complex tasks. However, it is unclear how the growing capabilities of conversational AI affect people's disclosure towards the system as previous research has revealed mixed effects of technology competence. To address this research question, we propose a framework systematically disentangling conversational AI competencies along the lines of the dimensions of human competencies suggested by the action regulation theory. Across two correlational studies and three experiments (N total = 1453), we investigated how these competencies differentially affect users' and non-users' disclosure towards conversational AI. Results indicate that intellectual competencies (e.g., planning actions and anticipating problems) in a conversational AI heighten users' willingness to disclose and reduce their privacy concerns. In contrast, meta-cognitive heuristics (e.g., deriving universal strategies based on previous interactions) raise privacy concerns for users and, even more so, for non-users but reduce willingness to disclose only for non-users. Thus, the present research suggests that not all competencies of a conversational AI are seen as merely positive, and the proposed differentiation of competencies is informative to explain effects on disclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right‐wing movements across the globe call for system‐changing actions. This development contradicts the typically assumed resistance to change among the political right. Many of these movements use conspiracist rhetoric and, thus, we reasoned that conspiracy mentality might be associated with the striving for system change—especially on the political right. In four cross‐sectional studies in Germany (one nationally quota‐balanced, one preregistered; total N = 1539) we found that high conspiracy mentality was related to support for social change among the right and to support for reactionary social change among the left. Support for change among those high in conspiracy mentality was diminished when elected representatives (vs the population) were thought to drive social change. These results suggest that both right wingers and left wingers high in conspiracy mentality support change in ways that are seemingly incompatible with their political orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]