Effect of priming by recalling emotions on the performance, mood, and optimism of university students in a written exam
Creators: name: Flegr, Jaroslav
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Education
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: Before a written exam (4-choices test, 30 questions) from Evolutionary biology, the subjects will be asked to complete an anonymous research questionnaire. The first part (32 questions or simple tasks) will be completed before the exam, the rest of the questionnaire (146 questions) immediately after the exam. Near the end of the first part of the questionnaire, one third of participants will be primed be recalling positive emotions, one third by recalling negative emotions and one third by neutral stimuli. Positive stimuli: 1) Think of 5 pleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them from (in your opinion) the most pleasant (1) to the relatively least pleasant (5). 2) Think of 5 pleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them in chronological order from the freshest (1) to the oldest (5) 3) Write the emotion you would most like to experience in the near future (this may be a different emotion than the previous ones). Negative stimuli: 1) Think of 5 unpleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them from (in your opinion) the most unpleasant (1) to the relatively least unpleasant (5). 2) Think of 5 unpleasant emotions (feelings) you have ever experienced. Try to rank them chronologically from the freshest (1) to the oldest (5). 3) Name the emotion you would least like to experience in the near future (it may be a different emotion than the previous ones). Neutral: 1) Write the five colors here, in the order, you can think of them. 2) Again, write the same five colors here. This time sort them by the number of letters and the same length words by alphabet. 3) Choose the color that you finished 3rd in order and list 5 objects of that color. Then, the probands should try to estimate 10 seconds and after that, they should rate their agreement with the following four statements by using 6-points Likert scale: 1) Now you feel physically great 2) Now you feel mentally great 3) Usually you feel physically great 4) Usually you feel mentally great. The last question of the first part of the questionnaire was “Estimate the number of mistakes you will make in the test (there will be 30 questions in total):” During this part of the test, probands will be asked to remember 12 words and after about 5 minutes to recall and write down these words. Also, their simple reaction tests will be measured 6 times (they will be requested to press one of 4 letters as quickly as possible. After finishing the test (exam), the subjects will be asked to complete the second part of the questionnaire, starting with the following questions: 1) Now you feel physically great 2) Now you feel mentally great 3) Usually you feel physically great 4) Usually you feel mentally great. They will be requested to tell us how many errors they have done in the test (they will be told this information immediately after the test) and how many errors they expected to have done immediately after the test (they will be asked to estimate this number before they will be told this). They will fill a panel of questions concerning their health, and self-rated their personality (TIPI) and abilities. They will also run three tests on memory, a simple reaction times test, Stroop’s test, and a 12-item IQ test. We will test the following hypotheses: 1) Priming by positive emotions will result in better performance in the exam. 2) Priming by positive emotions will result in the expectation of better performance in the exam. 3) Priming by positive emotions will result in more positive ratings of their usual mental health. 4) Priming by positive emotions will result in better performance in the performance tests. 5) Priming by positive emotions will result in overconfidence (primed subjects will rate their positive personality traits better). 6) Priming by negative emotions will result in underconfidence concerning their health (primed subjects will rate their health and life expectancy worse). In the exploratory part of the study, we will search for the factors that positively and negatively affect the performance of the students in the test (IQ, memory, reaction times, health, etc.) We will also search for the effect of health on the slow-fast life strategy of students. We will expect that subjects in worse health conditions will report an earlier start of sexual life, earlier menses, higher sexual desire, higher desire to have (more) children. We will also search for the effects of Covid-19, anti-Covid vaccines, toxoplasmosis, borreliosis, red hair, pale skin, Rh-negativity, and heigh-to-length of foot ratio to physical and mental health. About 300 subjects will participate in the test. We will analyze the data using a 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, etc. The experiment will run on Jan. 3. 2022. The preregistered hypotheses are distinct and independent. Therefore, no correction for multiple tests will be done. Ethical note: The exam will be a “zero term exam” – the students will be allowed to refuse the grade on the test and take part in three regular terms of oral exam instead. In addition, subjects primed by positive, negative, and neutral stimuli will be graded separately. In the informed consent, they will be informed that they can skip all questions of the questionnaire and just write the test from evolutionary biology.