How STRANGE are your study animals?

A new framework for studies of animal behaviour will help to avoid sampling bias— ten years on from the call to widen the pool of human participants in psychology research beyond the WEIRD.Publisher PDFNon peer reviewe

Intentions, efficacy, and norms: The impact of different self-regulatory cues on reducing engine idling at long wait stops

Idling engines contribute significantly to air pollution and health problems. In a field study at a busy railway crossing we used the Theory of Planned Behavior to design persuasive messages to convince car drivers (N = 442) to turn off their engines during long wait stops. We compared the effects of three different messages (focusing on outcome efficacy, normative reputation, or reflection on one's intentions) against a baseline condition. With differing effectiveness, all three messages had a positive effect compared with the baseline. Drivers were most likely to turn off their engines when the message focused on outcome efficacy (49%) or reflection (43%), as compared to the baseline (29%). The increased compliance in the normative reputation condition (38%) was not significantly different from baseline. Thus, stimulating self-regulatory processes, particularly outcome efficacy, is demonstrated to have a positive effect on pro-environmental driving behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Assessing Private and Public Need for Uniqueness: Validation of French Versions of the Need for Uniqueness (NfU) and Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness (SANU) Scales

Need for uniqueness represents the need for people to feel different and distinguish themselves from others. Two major scales exist that measure this need: the Need for Uniqueness scale (NfU; Snyder & Fromkin, 1977) and the Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness scale (SANU; Lynn & Harris, 1997b). We propose here a French version of both scales. Through a dual approach of exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses, we investigated the scales’ structure in student samples from two French-speaking countries (France and Switzerland, N D 1,348) as well as measures of internal and external validity. Both scales presented good psychometric properties in French. Additionally, we investigated differences between the scales, as literature suggests that the NfU relies mostly on public and risky displays of uniqueness, whereas the SANU focuses on private and more socially acceptable means to acquire a feeling of uniqueness. Differences arose in the links with several personality characteristics (emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, sensation seeking, and self-consciousness), suggesting that the NfU corresponds rather to a need to demonstrate uniqueness through public displays and the SANU to a need to feel unique through more private means. We discuss implications for research and provide advice on choosing by the scale most appropriate to the researcher’s aims