End-of-Semester Syndrome: How Situational Regulatory Fit Affects Test Performance Over an Academic Semester

Abstract

Psychology researchers often avoid running participants from subject pools at the end of the semester because they are “unmotivated.” We suggest that the end of the semester induces a situational prevention focus (i.e., sensitive to losses) unlike the beginning of the semester, which may induce a situational promotion focus (i.e., sensitive to gains). In two experiments, we presented participants with math problems at the beginning or end of an academic semester. End-of-semester participants performed better minimizing losses as compared to maximizing gains, whereas the opposite was true for beginning-of-semester participants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant R01 MH077708 to W. Todd Maddox and Arthur B. Markman. Data were collected at The University of Texas. We thank Jonathan Rein, Brian Glass, Darrell Worthy, Jeff Laux, Leonard Newman, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

Notes

¹Maddox, Baldwin, and Markman (2006) demonstrated that a gains structure with 2 points for a correct response and 0 points for an incorrect response produces the same pattern of results as 3 points for a correct response and 1 point for an incorrect response.

²Practically, it is very difficult in large participant pools to randomly assign participants to specific appointment times. Participants would need to keep appointments scheduled months in advance, and the participant database would need to be capable of handling appointments scheduled that far in advance.