Background: Proficiency in medical terminology is an essential competence of physicians which ensures reliable and unambiguous communication in everyday clinical practice. The attendance of a course on medical terminology is mandatory for human and dental medicine students in Germany. Students’ prerequisites when entering the course are diverse and the key learning objectives are achieved to a varying degree. Methods: A new learning space, the “TERMInator”, was developed at the University Medicine Greifswald to meet the medical students’ individual learning needs better. The interactive e-learning course serves as a supplement to the seminars, lectures and tutorials to rehearse and practically apply the course contents at an individual pace. It uses gamification elements and is supplied via the learning platform Moodle. The TERMInator was pilot implemented in two consecutive winter terms (2018/19, 2019/20) and comprehensively evaluated based on the general course evaluations and an anonymous questionnaire covering aspects of content, layout and user friendliness of the TERMInator and questions concerning the students’ learning preferences. Results: The TERMInator was rated very positively overall, which was also fed back to the lecturers during the classes. Students appreciate the new e-learning tool greatly and stress that the TERMInator should be further expanded. The handling of the TERMInator was considered to be very easy and, therefore, almost no training time was needed. The tasks were easy to understand and considered a good supplement to the seminar contents. The extent and quality of the images were seen rather critically. The students’ learning strategies differ. Although e-learning options were generally rated as very important, student tutorials were considered by far the most important. Conclusions: Medical terminology classes are characterised by heterogeneous learning groups and a high workload within a short time, which can lead to major challenges for the teaching staff. Complementary gamified e-learning tools are promising in view of the students’ different knowledge levels and changing learning behaviour. Trial registration: Not applicable.

Pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) such as climate-friendly mobility and eating habits hold great promise in terms of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, thus, are important goals for addressing climate change from a population perspective. Yet, sociodemographic correlates and differences in PEB intentions have to be considered in designing messages and behavior change interventions. This study implemented a quota-sampling survey (N = 979, 511 women, 468 men, age M = 50.4, SD = 17.2) of the German population and found that, overall, participants exhibit strong intentions to engage in various PEBs, with the exception of cycling and adopting a vegetarian diet. Moreover, women displayed higher intentions to engage in PEBs compared to men, particularly in adopting a vegetarian diet. The relationships between socioeconomic status (SES) and PEB intentions, as well as the combined effects of gender and SES, were inconsistent for different PEB intentions. We conclude that on a population level, intention-building interventions are necessary for vegetarianism and cycling, while for the other PEBs, interventions may focus on closing the intention–behavior gap. There is a need to further research the interplay of different PEBs in diverse groups and for interventional studies targeting the discrepancy in eating habits across genders.

In this article, we address the climate crisis as a moral issue and discuss the relevant moral and emotional processes and the role of the media underlying the motivations of individuals to behave in a less carbon-emitting manner. We provide theoretical insights from social psychology and emotion research and empirical data based on an online survey from Germany (N = 979). In the theoretical part, we outline the role of emotions in influencing carbon-related behavior, with a particular focus on self-condemning (e.g., guilt or shame), self-praising (e.g., pride), or other-suffering emotions (e.g., empathy). We further summarize the reasons for the low influence of the media on carbon-related behavior compared to the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical results confirm that participants reported other- suffering and self-condemning emotions in response to news content and rated their likelihood of personal behavior change as high when confronted with news about the climate crisis on a daily basis, as has been widely the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the media is responsible for regularly reporting on the victims of the climate crisis in order to generalize self-condemning and other-suffering emotions into affective attitudes. Opinion leaders can function as role models for low-carbon behavior.

According to the semantic primacy hypothesis of emotion generation, stimuli must be semantically categorized to evoke emotions. This hypothesis was tested for the subjective component of emotions in four chronometric experiments in which the conscious recognition of emotion-eliciting objects and the onset of affect was timed using temporal order judgments (TOJs, Exp. 1a, 1b, and 3) and simultaneity judgments (SJs, Exp. 2). Participants viewed pictures that elicited pleasant or unpleasant feelings. At varying intervals before and after picture onset, a visual probe stimulus was presented. In separate blocks of trials, the participants judged when they recognized the object shown in the picture and noticed the feeling evoked by the picture: Before or after the probe (TOJs), or simultaneously/not simultaneously with the probe (SJs). Psychometric functions were fitted to the data of the individual participants to determine the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) of the target events and the probe. In both tasks, the mean PSS of affect occurred significantly later than the PSS of object recognition, with an average delay of about 120 ms. A positive lag between object recognition and affect was found for nearly all participants and pictures. In addition, the latencies of object recognition and affect were positively correlated. The found temporal order of object recognition and affect is consistent with the findings of previous studies using speeded reaction time tasks. Implications of the findings for the cognition-emotion debate and for bodily feedback theories of emotional experience are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

To reach sustainability goals, researchers and policymakers must focus on addressing changes toward more pro-environmental behavior (PEB). Therefore, this study shows evidence-based perceptions of low- and high-cost behaviors and deduces recommendations for PEB interventions. We applied a multi-step mixed-method approach: First, a representative online survey was conducted to collect a general quantitative overview and classify low- and high-cost behavior based on past behavior and behavioral intentions. Second, a gamification intervention that aimed to gain quantitative data about certain behaviors and perceived low- and high-costs was conducted with university students. The results of the two studies showed that PEB can easily be categorized into high-, rather-high-, rather-low-, and low-cost behavior. However, this classification is not based on emission sectors, e.g., mobility, but on the specific behavior. Interventions can be recommended according to subjective costs: For example, low-cost behavior does not need additional interventions in most cases but must be maintained as is. According to the empirical findings, high-cost behavior needs top-down interventions, while rather-high- and rather-low-cost behavior requires bottom-up interventions to achieve behavior changes. In summary, managing interventions using this classification and focusing on high-impact behavior can lead to successful behavior changes and emission reductions.

The reduction of individual carbon consumption could make an important contribution to the worldwide effort to limit global warming. Based on Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement, we hypothesized that the propensity to morally disengage concerning high-carbon behaviors (e.g., eating meat or traveling by plane) is one important factor that prevents individuals from reducing their carbon footprint. To measure the propensity to morally disengage in high-carbon-related behavior contexts, a questionnaire (MD-HCB) was developed and psychometrically validated in an online study with a German sample (N = 220). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the final nine-item scale had a one-dimensional structure, as intended. The internal consistency of the scale was excellent (Cronbach’s α = 0.94) and the scale interpretation had predictive validity for both past low-carbon consumption behavior and the intention to engage in such behavior in the future. Correlational analyses with relevant existing instruments confirmed the construct validity of the interpretations that can be drawn from the MD-HCB, as its resulting score is related to, yet separable from, the general tendency to morally disengage and is meaningfully connected to related constructs. A pre-study with a student sample (N = 89) not only helped to identify limitations in the study design but also showed a weak predictive ability of moral competence concerning high-carbon consumption behavior and intention to change. Based on our findings, future media campaigns designed to increase people’s intention to reduce high-carbon behavior could focus on the modification of common cognitive disengagement strategies.