Publications by authors named "Kai Sassenberg"

Misinformation campaigns target wind farms, but levels of agreement with this misinformation among the broader public are unclear. Across six nationally quota-based samples in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia (total N = 6008), over a quarter of respondents agree with half or more of contrarian claims about wind farms. Agreement with diverse claims is highly correlated, suggesting an underlying belief system directed at wind farm rejection.

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Implementing technology-enhanced learning and teaching in schools causes major changes for both teachers and students. Research in other fields shows that individuals' regulatory orientation (i.e.

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Conspiracy beliefs (i.e. beliefs in specific conspiracy theories or the more general conspiracy mentality) are associated with a need for uniqueness and lower adherence to social norms.

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Intergroup emotions powerfully shape intergroup relations. Anger and fear fuel, while hope and sympathy reduce intergroup strife. This implies that emotion regulation may play an important role in improving intergroup relations.

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Successful leadership requires leaders to make their followers aware of expectations regarding the goals to achieve, norms to follow, and task responsibilities to take over. This awareness is often achieved through leader-follower communication. In times of economic globalization and digitalization, however, leader-follower communication has become both more digitalized (virtual, rather than face-to-face) and less frequent, making successful leader-follower-communication more challenging.

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Conspiracy theories are part of mainstream public life, with the potential to undermine governments, promote racism, ignite extremism and threaten public health efforts. Psychological research on conspiracy theories is booming, with more than half of the academic articles on the topic published since 2019. In this Review, we synthesize the literature with an eye to understanding the psychological factors that shape willingness to believe conspiracy theories.

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Similarity with others in need regarding various attributes [e.g., social group membership] has been shown to increase individuals' empathic responses, willingness to help and prosocial behaviour.

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Background: Physical exercise has been found to assert a positive impact on many muscular conditions. Exercise under face-to-face supervision is the gold standard, but access to it is limited, for instance, for economic reasons. App-guided therapy is an intervention that is more affordable and easily accessible.

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Group members frequently face group-related discrepancies, such as other group members violating group norms or outgroup members criticising the ingroup. In response, they often engage in confrontational reactions like expressing disapproval or excluding the person causing the discrepancy. The present work tests the often voiced but rarely studied idea that group-related discrepancies are met with such confrontational responses because discrepancies elicit of threat.

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Background: Official contact tracing apps have been implemented and recommended for use across nations to track and contain the spread of COVID-19. Such apps can be effective if people are willing to use them. Accordingly, many attempts are being made to motivate citizens to make use of the officially recommended apps.

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Objectives: Increasing vaccination hesitancy threatens societies' capacity to contain pandemics and other diseases. One factor that is positively associated with vaccination intentions is a supportive subjective norm (i.e.

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Background: Hip 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.

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Attitudes toward outgroups are an important determinant of peaceful coexistence in diverse societies, but it is difficult to improve them. The current research studies the impact of messages with negations on outgroup attitudes, more specifically on outgroup trust. All studies were preregistered.

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Purpose: The current study examined the predictive utility of emotional valence (i.e., positive and negative emotions) on weight loss intentions and behaviors, beyond theory of planned behavior constructs (i.

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Both team and individual sports require competition, whereas cooperation is more prevalent in team than in individual sports. In particular, team athletes have to compete (for starting roles) while cooperating (for team success) with the same teammates. For team athletes, competition and cooperative behavior, two mutually exclusive constructs according to earlier psychological research, might therefore be less incompatible than for individual athletes.

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Good team decisions require that team members share information with each other. Yet, members often tend to selfishly withhold important information. Does this tendency depend on their power within the team? Power-holders frequently act more selfishly (than the powerless)-accordingly, they might be tempted to withhold information.

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When people solve numerical tasks, they are able to adapt their responses to characteristics of the task. This suggests that number processing is under cognitive control. Yet, such prior research on cognitive control in numerical cognition largely focused on the role of task stimuli-neglecting the role of predictors that are not directly linked to cognitive and numerical capacities.

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The question of what feeling with another person elicits in the empathizing individual has instigated innumerable studies mainly focusing on the affective valence of empathy and the resulting consequences for prosocial behavior (cf. the empathy-altruism debate). The present research may contribute to this long-lasting debate by examining the cardiovascular reactivity of the empathizing individual.

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Past research on counterfactual mindsets (CFMs) has mainly focused on how those influence dealing with own information, without addressing the potential impact of CFMs on responses to others' information. Thus, this study examined how CFMs combined with an interpersonal focus influence responses to others' statements in a decision making context. Results reveal that a CFM combined with an interpersonal focus leads to more biased communication in response to others' information, thereby reinforcing own preferences.

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Civil war, flight, escape and expulsion are extremely stressful and assert a negative impact on refugees' mental health. However scientific research about resilience and coping of refugees is scarce. Especially in the recent refugee crisis, calls have been made to consider factors contributing to coping and resilience in this vulnerable population.

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Power usually lowers stress responses. In stressful situations, having high (vs. low) power heightens challenge and lowers threat.

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Background: Many people use the Internet for health-related information search, which is known to help regulate their emotional state. However, not much is known yet about how Web-based information search together with negative emotional states (ie, threat of cancer diagnosis) relate to preventive medical treatment decisions (ie, colonoscopy intentions).

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate how frequency of health-related Internet use together with perceived threat of a possible (bowel) cancer diagnosis influences intentions to get a colonoscopy.

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Power relations affect dynamics within groups. Power-holders' decisions not only determine their personal outcomes, but also the outcomes of others in the group that they control. Yet, power-holders often tend to overlook this responsibility to take care of collective interests.

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[Digital media as laypeople's source of information about the environment and health].

Bundesgesundheitsblatt Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz

June 2017

Over the last two decades, the Internet has become the primary source of information. Thanks to the Internet, laypeople have access to information from the health and the environmental sector, which was for a long time available only to experts (e. g.

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Social power implies responsibility. Yet, power-holders often follow only their own interests and overlook this responsibility. The present research illuminates how a previously adopted cognitive focus guides perceived responsibility when a person receives high (vs.

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