Learning about a serious disease: When a personalized message is harmful unless you are happy.

According to the personalization principle, addressing learners by means of a personalized compared to a nonpersonalized message can foster learning. Interestingly, though, a recent study found that the personalization principle can invert for aversive contents. The present study investigated whethe...

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Publicado en:Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Vol. 37; no. 5; pp. 1312 - 1324
Autores principales: Kühl, Tim, Münzer, Stefan
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Oct2021
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Oct2021
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        atl: Learning about a serious disease: When a personalized message is harmful unless you are happy.
      aug:
        au:
          Kühl, Tim
          Münzer, Stefan
        affil: Psychology of Education, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
      sug:
        subj:
          Computer-Assisted Instruction
          Health Education
          Multimedia
          Human
          Germany
      ab: According to the personalization principle, addressing learners by means of a personalized compared to a nonpersonalized message can foster learning. Interestingly, though, a recent study found that the personalization principle can invert for aversive contents. The present study investigated whether the negative effect of a personalized message for an aversive content can be compensated when learners are in a happy mood. It was hypothesized that the negative effect of a personalized compared to a nonpersonalized message would only be observable for participants in a sad mood, while for participants in a happy mood a personalized message should be beneficial. A 2 × 2 between‐subject design with mood (happy vs. sad) and personalization (personalized vs. nonpersonalized message) was used (N = 125 University students). Mood was experimentally varied prior to learning. Learning outcomes were measured by a retention and a transfer test. Results were essentially in line with the assumption: For participants in the sad mood condition, a negative effect of a personalized message was observable for retention and transfer. For participants in the happy mood condition, a positive effect of personalized message was observable for retention, but no effect for transfer. Note that the manipulation check measure for the mood induction procedure did not detect differences between conditions; this may be due to a shortcoming of the used measure (as indicated by an additional evaluation study). The study emphasizes the importance to consider the inherent emotional content of a topic, such as its aversive nature, since the emotional content of a topic can be a boundary condition for design principles in multimedia learning. The study also highlights the complex interplay of externally induced and inherently arising emotions. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic?: Multimedia learning is usually fostered by a personalized message (e.g., using personal pronouns) compared to a nonpersonalized message.A personalized message can be harmful when the topic is about a serious disease.Little is known about boundary conditions for when a personalized message can be harmful. What this paper adds?: A happy mood can help processing a personalized message about a serious disease.For learners in a happy mood, such a personalized message was beneficial.For learners in a sad mood, such a personalized message was harmful. Implications for practice and/or policy: The emotional content of a topic should be considered when applying design principles.Unpleasant contents may reverse well‐established multimedia design principles.A positive mood is promising to counteract the reversing impact of unpleasant contents.
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    language: English
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