The overall objective of this study was to investigate the longitudinal association between diffusion of responsibility and pro-aggressive bystander behavior across three time points in upper elementary education. This three-wave longitudinal study included 1905 Swedish students who completed a questionnaire in at least one of the three waves: the…

Disengagement is a concept that captures the gradual behavioral, affective, and cognitive distancing from school, and is thus an early indicator of students being at risk for dropout. Based on a social identity framework, we predicted that higher social identification with the class and a positive classroom climate would be associated with lower…

Guided by the social-cognitive theory and self-determination theory, this study examined whether moral disengagement is indirectly associated with pro-bullying, passive bystanding, and defending, mediated by autonomous motivation, introjected motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation to defend victims of bullying among early adolescents.…

Teachers sometimes learn information about their students prior to teaching them, a phenomenon we call "teacher foreknowledge." This information may be useful, but it may also bias teacher expectations for students in harmful ways. To date, few studies have quantitatively documented the types of foreknowledge teachers receive. When,…

In school bullying, witnesses play a fundamental role because their defensive reactions can stop bullying situations. However, a great majority of witnesses remain passive despite their prodefense personal beliefs. To address this gap between witnesses' beliefs and behaviors, we developed and tested two social psychology strategies, namely, the…

The goal of the present study was to examine factors associated with academic self-handicapping in Black students attending a predominantly white university. Factors examined included sociodemographic factors (gender, first-generation college student status); psychological factors (family support, perceived discrimination, Black identity); and…

Aggressive student behavior is considered a leading risk factor for teacher stress. However, teachers' coping styles may affect how they perceive and respond to aggressive student behavior. This study tests whether teachers' perceptions of aggressive student behavior mainly mirror objectively observed aggression in presence of the teacher (as…

Exhaustion, as a key facet of burnout, is one of the most common risks that compromises teacher well-being and contributes to a shortage of teachers. While the school social environment has been identified as an influential context for teacher exhaustion, the relative importance of its different facets remains unclear. This study focused on the…

According to attributional theory, when the application of effort leads to success we praise the achievement. Effort and ability, however, are seen as compensatory and thus, paradoxically, being praised can lead to attributions of low ability. Our study investigates whether praise, not for academic performance, but for social classroom behavior,…

This study evaluated the impact of a school-based program designed to reduce implicit prejudice towards migrants in fifth-grade school children. The program used empathy and perspective taking and direct and indirect contact as strategies to reduce ethnic prejudice. Multiple activities were used, including drawings by migrant children as…

Previous research has indicated that academic entitlement can serve as a barrier between students and the benefits of a university education. As entitled students function as consumers and externalize responsibility for their learning outcomes, they risk lower grades and anti-intellectualism attitudes. This study explored how academic entitlement…

This study examines whether self-efficacy predicted academic success (via self-regulation) for first-generation and continuing-generation college students (Model 1) and among various racial/ethnic groups (Model 2). The 3,316 ethnically diverse incoming freshmen from a large, urban, public university (53% first-generation) participated in this…

To explore effective growth mindset intervention that is applicable for the higher education setting, study 1 conducted a systematic review to analyze relevant literature published between 2010 and 2021. We identified 13 papers and synthesized the results of these studies to understand how the intervention was designed, conducted, and evaluated,…

Objective: Little attention has been given to the relationship between cyber polyvictimization and academic outcomes (e.g., classroom misconduct, school readiness, academic performance, absenteeism, school behavioral problems), and the factors, such as parent social support, that buffer against the negative outcomes associated with experiencing…

The aim of the current study was to extend knowledge of occupational commitment by examining predictors at the teacher- and school-level. Several job resources hypothesized to be positively associated with occupational commitment were examined: helpful feedback, input in decision-making, teacher collaboration, and principal discipline support. The…