Rosman Tom, Seifried Eva, Merk Samuel
Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information (ZPID), Trier, Germany.
Institute of Psychology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2020 Apr 16;11:570. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00570. eCollection 2020.
We combined inter- and intraindividual approaches to investigate university students' biology- and psychology-specific specific epistemic beliefs (beliefs about the nature and structure of knowledge). We expected that university students would perceive the discipline of biology as more absolute and less multiplistic than the discipline of psychology (intraindividual perspective). Furthermore, we expected students from so-called "hard" disciplines to perceive biology as more absolute and less multiplistic than students from soft disciplines (interindividual perspective). Finally, we expected that students from hard disciplines, compared to their peers from soft disciplines, would perceive stronger differences between biology and psychology (combined perspective). Hypotheses were tested, using Bayes factors, in = 938 university students from a multitude of disciplines. Results revealed that university students perceive biology as considerably more absolute and less multiplistic compared to psychology. However, the findings also suggest that there are no strong interindividual differences between students from hard and soft disciplines regarding the perception of biology. Finally, results revealed that students enrolled in harder disciplines perceive a slightly stronger difference between biology and psychology. In sum, intraindividual effects were considerably stronger, which elicits doubt that students from hard disciplines espouse a fundamentally different set of epistemic beliefs than their peers from soft disciplines.
我们结合个体间和个体内的方法，来研究大学生在生物学和心理学方面特定的认知信念（关于知识的本质和结构的信念）。我们预计，大学生会认为生物学学科比心理学学科更具绝对性且多元性更少（个体内视角）。此外，我们预计来自所谓“硬”学科的学生比来自“软”学科的学生更认为生物学具有绝对性且多元性更少（个体间视角）。最后，我们预计与来自“软”学科的同龄人相比，来自“硬”学科的学生会认为生物学和心理学之间的差异更大（综合视角）。我们使用贝叶斯因子对938名来自众多学科的大学生进行了假设检验。结果显示，与心理学相比，大学生认为生物学具有明显更高的绝对性且多元性更少。然而，研究结果还表明，在对生物学的认知方面，来自“硬”学科和“软”学科的学生之间没有强烈的个体间差异。最后，结果显示，就读于“硬”学科的学生认为生物学和心理学之间的差异略大。总之，个体内效应要强烈得多，这让人怀疑来自“硬”学科的学生与来自“软”学科的同龄人所秉持的认知信念根本不同。
