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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1405308

Towards the Role of Social Agency in Explaining the Personalization Effect

Provisionally accepted
Maike Jana Lindhaus Maike Jana Lindhaus *Julia Sabrina Bolin Julia Sabrina Bolin Laura Weßeling Laura Weßeling Luisa Oest Luisa Oest Stephan Dutke Stephan Dutke
  • University of Münster, Münster, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Personalizing written learning materials has been shown to enhance learning compared to conventional text. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of social agency in explaining the personalization effect. For this purpose, a theory-based scale for measuring social agency was designed including four facets: conversational character, sympathy and emotional connection, explanatory effect, and task involvement. The results of two experiments with N1 = 66 university and N2 = 77 highschool students showed that personalized written learning materials compared to nonpersonalized learning materials were rated higher on the first and partly on the second facet of social agency. However, the personalized materials did not increase learning outcome measures. Consistently, no differences in the task involvement between persons learning with personalized and non-personalized materials were found. Results show that personalization in conversational style alone does not lead to an improvement in learning performance unless other factors intensify task involvement.

    Keywords: Social agency theory, Personalization effect, Conversational style, Task involvement, linguistic personalization

    Received: 22 Mar 2024; Accepted: 05 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lindhaus, Bolin, Weßeling, Oest and Dutke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Maike Jana Lindhaus, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.