Social psychological skill in a cross-cultural setting: A study on medical and dentistry undergraduate students

Abstract

Social psychological skill deals with how people understand and predict social psychological phenomena. This skill has been shown to be positively correlated with other parameters such as cognitive reflective ability and introversion. In our study, we examined social psychological skill and its relationship with cognitive reflection ability, language preference, gender, and fear of failure in a sample of undergraduate medical and dentistry students of multiple nationalities at Jordan University of Science and Technology. A questionnaire in Arabic or English language testing participants’ social psychological skill was given to 605 participants. Fear of failing exams was assessed by measuring reported incidence of fears of failing tests in college, and the Bat and Ball problem was assessed to measure cognitive reflection. The results showed that 501 students (82%) opted to answer in their Arabic native language and 61% of total respondents were females. We found that social psychological skill was significantly and positively related to English language preference and cognitive reflection but not significantly related to less fear of failure in college exams. The obtained results are compared to existing data and conclusions are withdrawn.

Keywords

• social psychological skill
• social psychology
• cognitive reflection
• intelligence
• culture