Effect of priming by recalling names and properties of pets on the performance of university students in a written exam and study of effects of biological factors on the performance of students
Creators: name: Flegr, Jaroslav
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Life Sciences
subject: Education

description: Before the written exam (4-choices test) from Methodology of science, the subjects will be asked to complete the anonymous research questionnaire. The first part (about 20 questions) will be completed before the exam, rest of the questionnaire (130 questions) immediately after the exam. The last 5 questions of the first part will be either 1) Try to list your 5 favorite (real and living) cats or dogs you know. Try to sort them from the most to the least favored. 2) Choose one of them and try to characterize it using the 6 most suitable terms. 3) Right now, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 4) Usually, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 5) Estimated number of errors in the test (the test will have 30 questions) or 1) Try to list 5 different items of furniture. Try to sort them from the most to the least useful. 2) Choose one of them and try to characterize it using the 6 most suitable terms. 3) Right now, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 4) Usually, I feel very comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 5) Estimated number of errors in the test (the test will have 30 questions) After finishing the test, the subjects will be asked to complete the second part of the questionnaire, starting with the following questions 1) After finishing the test, I feel comfortable (6-points Likert scale) 2) Estimated number of errors in the test. About 200 subjects will participate in the test. Randomly chosen half of them will be asked to remember and to characterize the animals, half the furniture. We expect: a) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be in a better mood before the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture – they will rate their physical and mental condition better before the test and will expect a better performance in the test (less errors). b) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be in a better mood after the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture They will rate themselves as more easygoing and will rate their health status and sexual performance better. c) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will be more self-confident/optimistic (they will rate their properties and abilities better and will expect to have higher life expectancy) after the test than the controls who will have thought about furniture d) people who will have thought about their favorite pets will perform better in the exam (will have a lower number of errors). Independently, in the explorative part of the study, we will explore also the effects of the body pigmentation, Rh, BMI, food-to-body high ratio and infection with SARS-CoV-2, Toxoplasma gondii, Borrelia sp., and anti-covid vaccination on the health status, performance in the test, sexual performance (number of sexual partners etc.). We will also expect to find a positive correlation between declared SM sexual preferences and bullying (both passive and active) and willingness torturing terrorist in the moral dilemma test. Moreover, we will also test the life-history theory, we will search for the evidence that subjects with worse health will express the indices of the faster life history (will have the tendency for earlier reproduction and will have thee higher sexual desire). We will analyze the data using one-tailed partial Kendall test (age and sex controlled). In the post hoc tests, we will analyze data of men and women separately and will search for possible effects of potential confounding variables, such as current study performance, the intensity of liking pets, mood and optimism before the test, etc. The experiment will run in 3.12. 2021 The preregistered hypotheses are distinct and independent. Therefore, no correction for multiple tests will be done.