Teacher-student empathic relationship shaping: an elimination mechanism for psychological segmentations in entrepreneurship education | BMC Psychology
Case studies
This study followed the principle of typicality and universality of the objects, selected a college innovation and entrepreneurship course as the research case, with a total of 424 undergraduates in their junior year have been invited to take part in following experiments. Three experiments on rational relationship shaping to eliminate confidence segmentations, emotional relationship shaping to eliminate confidence segmentations, and non-negligible affective bias have been conducted. There were 141 participants in Experiment 1, 148 participants in Experiment 2, and 151 participants in Experiment 3, all experiments were conducted with the knowledge of the experimenters. First, choosing junior undergraduates as the research object, because their employment intention has begun to take shape, with greater entrepreneurial possibilities, and they are in the important formation of entrepreneurial intentions, which can be intervened and guided by timely education. Second, the innovation and entrepreneurship course are of a typical form for entrepreneurship education, through its in-depth exploration, the obtained conclusions have good representativeness and universality, which in turn provide reference for other entrepreneurship education activities. Last, in the experimental process, the research team combined entrepreneurship education with empathy theory, aiming at expanding the understanding of entrepreneurial empathy education in the academia and the educational circle, and bringing a positive impact on the development of innovation and entrepreneurship education. With this innovative research, this study expected to provide new ideas for the current entrepreneurship education.
Research ideas
Based on empathy theory and social psychology theory, this study intended to explore the pathways by which the teacher-student empathic relationship influences psychological connection. In order to understand and explain the logic of “empathy eliminating segmentations” more comprehensively, drawing on Davis et al. [66] and Blanchette and Richards [21], this study conducted three experiments from the perspectives of rational relationship (cognitive empathy), perceptual relationship (affective empathy), and affective bias, together with innovation and entrepreneurship courses in colleges and universities.
Experiment 1 aimed to understand how rational relationships shaping can eliminate the confidence segmentations, which is the relationship between cognitive empathic connection and confidence segmentations. The participants were randomly divided into two groups and the cognitive empathy was taken as the manipulated variable. The same teacher (with high confidence in student entrepreneurship) was invited to give a 45-min innovation and entrepreneurship course to each of the two groups, while cognitive empathy was manipulated for both teachers and students. The teacher was asked to intentionally teach the course in different teaching modes (conventional teaching vs. cognitive empathic teaching) in order to observe the changes of student entrepreneurship confidence in the two groups, so as to compare the teacher-student entrepreneurship confidence segmentations.
Experiment 2 aimed to reveal how perceptual relationships shaping can eliminate confidence segmentations, which is the relationship between affective empathic connection and confidence segmentations. Following the experimental design philosophy of Experiment 1, participants who had not involved were re-organized into random groups, with affective empathy as a manipulated variable. The same teacher (with high confidence in student entrepreneurship) was invited to give a 45-min innovation and entrepreneurship course to each of the two groups, while affective empathy was manipulated for both teachers and students. The teacher was asked to intentionally teach the course in different teaching modes (conventional teaching vs. affective empathic teaching) in order to observe the changes of student entrepreneurship confidence in the two groups, so as to compare the teacher-student entrepreneurship confidence segmentations.
Experiment 3 was designed to verify the impact of affective bias on teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations. Following the design philosophy of the previous two experiments, participants who had not engaged were randomly grouped, with affective bias as a manipulated variable. The same teacher (with high confidence in student entrepreneurship) was invited to give a 45-min innovation and entrepreneurship course to each of the two groups. The teacher was asked to intentionally manipulate the affective bias (with intervention vs. without intervention) of participants in the experimental group, in order to observe the changes of student entrepreneurship confidence in the two groups, so as to compare the teacher-student entrepreneurship confidence segmentations.
The three experiments above also integrated individual conditions and supporting environment, to explore their moderating role between empathic relationships and psychological connection. The incorporation of individual conditions and supporting environment, helps to comprehensively understand the mechanisms of the three types of empathic relationships and psychological connection, so as to further shed lights on their interactions with confidence segmentations.
Experiment 1: cognitive empathy shaping to eliminate confidence segmentations
Experiment 1 was aimed to examine the influence of teacher-student cognitive empathy on entrepreneurial confidence (test H1), and the moderating mechanism of individual condition perception and supporting environment perception on cognitive empathy in the process of entrepreneurial education. A one-way between-groups design has been utilized, while involving two groups, a conventional teaching group (control group) and a cognitive empathy teaching group (experimental group).
Experimental design and procedures
College students are an important group in the process of entrepreneurship. The participants in experiment 1 were 141 junior undergraduates from different provinces who participated in the course of innovation and entrepreneurship in the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of W University. Meanwhile, in order to avoid potential bias in the sampling process, the researchers first divided the participants into male and female groups based on gender. Then, the two groups were randomly assigned to the two experimental groups, in the form of drawing lots (the number of the two groups was the same, the participants’ entrepreneurial intention and the overall characteristics have not significant difference), and each student was numbered, and the number was from small to large.
The same teacher (with high confidence in student entrepreneurship) was invited to teach a 45-min innovation and entrepreneurship course separately, which was whole-process videotaped. And different teaching modes were employed to manipulate teacher-student cognitive empathy. Specifically, in the control group, the teacher adopted a conventional teaching method, which mainly relies on textbook for one-way lecture without involving discussion and interaction among students. The experimental scenario was as follows: The teacher opened the PPT directly in class and began to explain the theoretical knowledge, while the students showed inattentive behaviors, such as playing mobile phones and wandering their minds. However, teachers do not interfere with students’ behavior, resulting in a lack of interaction with students and a lack of active atmosphere in the teaching process. Last, the teaching task is completed, and the student leaves the classroom with a blank face.
In the experimental group, teachers use multimedia resources to explain and pay attention to students’ learning status, and guide students to discuss and express entrepreneurial ideas. The specific experiment situation is: the teacher puts forward thought-provoking questions, organizes students to have group discussions, stimulates students’ thinking and encourages them to speak actively. The teacher asked and guided the students’ answers to help them better understand the nature and process of entrepreneurship. Although not all teaching tasks were completed at the end of the class, the students showed a keen interest and were passionate about the topic of entrepreneurship.
Subsequently, at the end of the course participants in both groups were asked to rate the cognitive empathy with the teacher in the class with 5-point Likert scale o on four items, “I can experience joy when the teacher talks about successful cases of entrepreneurship in the class”, “I can perceive, understand and identify with the teacher’s views and opinions about entrepreneurship in the class”, “I can perceive the teacher’s views and attitudes about entrepreneurship and how they affect me”, and “I get excited when I see a success story” In order to more intuitively measure the emotional connection degree of cognitive empathy between teachers and students in the process of entrepreneurship education, this study adopted a 5-point Likert scale, (1 = very inconsistent, 5 = very consistent) [67], The higher the score, the stronger the cognitive empathy between teacher and student.
After completing the part of the independent variable manipulation, the participants were also required to complete other related questionnaires, which consisted of two parts. The first part was students’ personal information, including individual condition (gender, age, family conditions, and self-perception) and supporting environment (family, school, and local policy support). The second part was to measure the entrepreneurial confidence measure, which refers to a scale of Nepal [68], with screening and modification according to the research context, obtaining four question items. In order to intuitively measure students’ self-perception of individual condition and supporting environment, both sections were scored on a 5-point Likert scale, categorized as “very low”, “low”, “medium”, “high”, “very high”. Higher scores indicate that participants were with more entrepreneurial confidence.
At the same time, in order to measure the difference in entrepreneurial confidence between teachers and students, teachers also need to watch the class video after class and fill in the measurement items of entrepreneurial confidence evaluation for each student, according to the student’s class performance and opinion expression. The entrepreneurial confidence evaluation is corresponding to students’ given number, so as to obtain the teacher’s entrepreneurial confidence score. Combined with the score of students’ self-entrepreneurship confidence, we calculate the differentiation of teachers’ and students’ entrepreneurial confidence, that is, the absolute value of the difference between teachers’ and students’ self-entrepreneurship confidence scores. Through this indicator, we can better understand the segmentation in teacher- student entrepreneurial confidence.
Experimental results and analyses
Manipulation check and reliability test
11 invalid questionnaires were excluded and 130 valid questionnaires were collected, with an effective rate of 92.199%. The average age of the participants was 20.491 years (SD = 0.912) and 71.538% were female. In addition, Cronbach’s α coefficient of the cognitive empathy scale was 0.964, and that of the entrepreneurial confidence scale was 0.962, both of which were greater than 0.7, indicating good internal consistency and reliability of the scale. To further test the effectiveness of manipulation on cognitive empathy in Experiment 1, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used in this study. As shown in Fig. 2, the cognitive empathy scores of the experimental group were significantly higher than those of the control group (experimental group M = 4.305, SD = 0.369, control group M = 1.915, SD = 0.743). It suggests that our manipulation on cognitive empathy between teachers and students in the classroom is effective.
Experiment 1—One-way ANOVA
Hypothesis test
First, we examine the influence mechanism of cognitive empathy on the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students. Based on the results of one-way ANOVA in Fig. 2, it was found that there was a significant difference in entrepreneurial confidence between the experimental group and the control group (P < 0.001). Compared with the traditional teaching control group, the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students in the cognitive empathy teaching group was smaller (M = 0.195, SD = 0.265; M control group = 2.428, SD = 0.766), the students’ entrepreneurial confidence was higher, so cognitive empathy can shape rational relationship to eliminate the confidence segmentation between teachers and students, which validated H1.
Second, we verified the moderating role of individual condition perception in the relationship between cognitive empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence, which mainly focused on students’ family circumstances (living standard, income). Process model 1 was employed (Bootstrap sample: 5000) with 95% confidence intervals. The analysis results are shown in Table 1. The results show that cognitive empathy, individual condition perception, and the interaction effect of cognitive empathy and individual condition perception have significantly positive effects on students’ entrepreneurial confidence, with regression coefficients of 0.465, 0.556, and 0.099, respectively. This further validates that cognitive empathy can shape rational relationship, significantly improve students’ entrepreneurial confidence, and eliminate the teacher-student confidence segmentation. Moreover, it can be preliminarily verified that individual condition perception can positively moderate the relationship between cognitive empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence.
In order to further explore the difference of one factor dependent on another at different levels, this study continues to conduct simple effect analysis, and the specific results were shown in Table 2. On the one hand, with fixed individual condition perception, it was found that when cognitive empathy was at different levels, the impact of individual condition perception on students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.05) had its statistical significance, and when there is a high cognitive empathy, individual condition perception had the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 95.101). On the other hand, with fixed cognitive empathy, it was found that only when individual condition perception was medium or high, the impact of cognitive empathy on students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.01) had its statistical significance, and with high individual condition perception, cognitive empathy had the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 11.126). In summary, the effect of cognitive empathy on entrepreneurial confidence is more pronounced for individuals with higher individual condition perception, which means higher individual condition perception will strengthen the positive predictive effect of cognitive empathy on teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentation, and H4a was validated.
Last, we verified the moderating role of the supporting environment perception in the relationship between cognitive empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence, including local policies, school policies, and family support. Using the above test methods, the analysis results are shown in Table 3. The results showed that cognitive empathy, supporting environment perception, and the interaction effect of cognitive empathy and supporting environment perception had significantly positive effects on students’ entrepreneurial confidence, with regression coefficients of 0.647, 0.389, and 0.084, respectively, which once again verified that cognitive empathy can shape rational relationship, significantly improve students’ entrepreneurial confidence, and eliminate the teacher-student confidence segmentation. Moreover, it can be preliminarily verified that the supporting condition perception can positively moderate the relationship between cognitive empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence.
In order to further explore the difference of one factor dependent on another at different levels, this study continues to conduct a simple effect analysis, as shown in Table 4. On the one hand, with fixed supporting environment perception, it was found that when cognitive empathy was at different levels, the impact of supporting environment perception on students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.01) had its statistical significance, and when cognitive empathy was high, supporting environment perception had the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 39.229). On the other hand, with fixed cognitive empathy, it was found that only when the supporting environment perception was low, medium or high, the impact of cognitive empathy on students’ entrepreneurial confidence score (p < 0.01) had its statistical significance, and when the supporting environment perception was low, the cognitive empathy had the least impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 6.945).To summarize, the impact of cognitive empathy on entrepreneurial confidence is more pronounced for individuals with high supporting environment perception. The moderating effect of the supporting environment perception is significant, which means the supporting environment perception significantly reinforces the positive relationship between cognitive empathy and teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, which validated H5a.
Results and discussion
Experiment 1 verified the impact of cognitive empathy on eliminating the teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations. The results showed that the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students in the cognitive empathy teaching group was smaller (M group = 0.195, SD = 0.265; M control group = 2.428, SD = 0.766). Through more abundant teaching forms in entrepreneurial education methods, students’ enthusiasm can evoke their cognitive empathy, and then eliminate the confidence segmentation between teachers and students. It suggested that the establishment of a rational relationship between teachers and students through cognitive empathy is based on entrepreneurial cognition, which can eliminate the teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, as well as promote the teaching efficiency.
In addition, this study also found that individual conditions as well as supporting environment play a moderating role in the impact of cognitive empathy on eliminating teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, and it goes for individuals with high cognitive empathy or low cognitive empathy. When cognitive empathy was high, the impact of supporting environment perception on students’ entrepreneurial confidence was the greatest (F = 39.229), and when the supporting environment perception was low, the impact of cognitive empathy on students’ entrepreneurial confidence was the least (F = 6.945). This reveals that students with a high perception of their own condition and supporting environment are more likely to trust the opinions conveyed by teachers, in the process of entrepreneurship education. In the teaching process, teachers can improve students’ cognitive empathy ability and cultivate rational relationship between teachers and students by changing teaching methods.
However, considering the small number of experimental participants, only 141 students from W university were selected for the experiment, which affected the universality of experimental results. In addition, the process of cognitive empathy is often accompanied by affective empathy, because they are inseparable. After analyzing the teacher-student rational relationship and psychological connection relationship shaping, it is worth considering whether the emotional relationship between teachers and students will have an impact on psychological connection. Therefore, in order to further investigate whether affective empathy accompanied by cognitive empathy, has an impact on teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, we carried out Experiment 2 following the research design of Experiment 1.
Experiment 2: affective empathy shaping to eliminate confidence segmentations
Experiment 2 was aimed to examine the impact of affective empathy on the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students (Test H2), and to clarify the moderating effects of individual condition perception and supporting environment perception on affective empathy in the process of entrepreneurial education. A one-way between-groups design was employed, with a conventional teaching group (control group) and an affective empathy teaching group (experimental group).
Experimental design and procedures
According to the screening conditions of experiment 1, the participants of experiment 2 were also 148 junior undergraduates from the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of W University. In addition, in order to ensure the independence of the experiment, the participants did not engage in other experiments before. According to the classification scheme of experiment 1, experiment 2 also randomly allocated male and female groups to one of the two experimental groups (the number of the two groups is the same, and there is no significant difference in their entrepreneurial intention and overall characteristics), and numbered each student in an order from small to large.
Following the idea of Experiment 1. The same teacher (with high confidence in students’ entrepreneurship) gave a 45-min innovation and entrepreneurship course to the two groups of participants, which was whole-process videotaped. The affective empathy between teacher and students was again manipulated by different teaching modes. Specifically, in the teaching experiment of the control group, the teacher taught according to the traditional teaching form in experiment 1, and directly explained according to the textbook content, without involving discussion or other interactive links between students.
In the teaching experiment of the experimental group, teachers are committed to creating a positive emotional atmosphere and introducing entrepreneurial stories to students in an emotionally rich way, aiming to stimulate students’ enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. The specific experiment situation is: the teacher walks into the classroom with a smile, plays a video of the entrepreneurial story of a well-known entrepreneur, and introduces these cases passionately, thereby introducing the theme of the class. In class, the teacher pays attention to subtle changes in students’ expressions and ask leading questions to stimulate students’ thinking and express personal ideas. The teacher makes rational analysis based on students’ answers to help them better understand the essence of entrepreneurship and their advantages in entrepreneurship. Through their positive attitude, the teacher successfully motivated the students, making the whole group of students present in mutual interaction and active atmosphere, and the students’ expressions changed from worried to confident. Despite not being able to complete all the tasks, the students showed great enthusiasm and anticipation for the topic of entrepreneurship. In the whole process of teaching experiment, teachers’ emotional guidance and students’ participation and interaction jointly cultivated students’ positive attitude and deep thinking.
Subsequently, after complete the course, the two groups of participants were asked to rate their affective empathy with the teacher on four items, which are referred to the affective empathy part of the Basic Empathy Scale (“I can be aware of the teacher’s emotions before he explicitly states his emotions”, “When the teacher is happy about a successful business case, I feel more confident about the entrepreneurship”, “I feel the teacher’s emotions and attitudes towards entrepreneurship”, and “When I see a successful entrepreneurship in a video, I feel happy about it, too”), In order to more intuitively measure the emotional connection of affective empathy between teachers and students in the process of entrepreneurship education, this study adopted a 5-point Likert scale (1 = very inconsistent, 5 = very consistent) [67], that is, the higher the score, the stronger the affective empathy between teachers and students. In addition, both teachers and participants were required to complete the entrepreneurial confidence evaluation, as well as measuring of entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students. The measurement method was the same as experiment 1.
Experimental results and analysis
Manipulation check and reliability test
Excluding the 13 under-filled questionnaires, 135 valid questionnaires were collected. The participants’ average age was 20.532 years old (SD = 0.904), and 66.667% were female. In addition, the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the affective empathy scale was 0.973, greater than 0.7, indicating good internal consistency and reliability of the scale. To further test the effectiveness of manipulation in experiment 2 on affective empathy, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used in this experiment. As shown in Fig. 3, the affective empathy score of the control group (M group = 1.649, SD = 0.382) was significantly lower than that of the experimental group (M group = 4.313, SD = 0.397). It shows that affective empathy manipulation is effective.
Experiment 2—One-way ANOVA
Hypothesis test
First, we examine the effect of affective empathy on the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students. According to the results of one-way ANOVA as shown in Fig. 3, there was a significant difference in entrepreneurial confidence between the experimental group and the control group (P < 0.001). Compared with the traditional teaching control group, the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between the teachers and students in the affective empathy teaching group was smaller (M control group = 2.474, SD = 0.813, M experimental group = 0.246, M experimental group = 2.474, SD = 0.813, and M experimental group = 0.246, respectively). SD = 0.373), students’ entrepreneurial confidence score is higher, so affective empathy can shape emotional relationship to eliminate the confidence segmentation between teachers and students, which validated H2.
Second, we verified the moderating role of individual condition perception in the relationship between affective empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence. Individual condition perception in this study mainly considered students’ family circumstances (standard of living and income). Process model 1 was employed (Bootstrap sample: 5000) with 95% confidence intervals. The analysis results are shown in Table 5. The results showed that the main effect of affective empathy was significantly positive, while the main effect of individual condition perception was not significant, and the interaction effect between affective empathy and individual condition perception was significantly negative, with regression coefficients of 0.919, −0.039, and −0.062, respectively, which further verified that affective empathy can shape perceptual relationship and significantly improve students’ entrepreneurial confidence. In addition, it can be preliminarily verified that individual condition perception negatively moderates the relationship between affective empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence.
In order to further explore the difference of one factor dependent on another at different levels, this study continued to conduct a simple effect analysis, as shown in Table 6. On the one hand, with fixed individual condition perception, it was found that only when affective empathy was very low, medium or very high, the impact of individual condition perception on students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.05) had its statistical significance. When affective empathy is very high, individual condition perception has the least influence on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 3.232). When affective empathy was medium, individual condition perception had the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 8.366). On the other hand, with fixed the affective empathy, it is found that except the individual condition perception was very low, in other cases, the impact of affective empathy on the students’ entrepreneurial confidence score (p < 0.01) had its statistical significance. And affective empathy has the least effect on students’ entrepreneurial confidence when individual condition perception is very high (F = 22.394); affective empathy has the greatest effect on students’ entrepreneurial confidence when individual condition perception is medium (F = 230.640). In summary, the positive effect of affective empathy on entrepreneurial confidence is more effective for individuals with poor individual condition perception, while the positive effect of affective empathy on entrepreneurial confidence is more insignificant for individuals with better perception, which means individual condition perception will weaken the positive predictive effect of affective empathy on the teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, and H4b was validated.
Last, we verified the moderating role of supporting environment perception (local policies, school policies, and family support) in the relationship between affective empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence. Using the above test methods, the analysis results are shown in Table 7. The results showed that the main effect of affective empathy was significantly positive, while the main effect of supporting environmental perception was not significant, and the interaction effect of affective empathy and supporting environmental perception was significantly negative, with regression coefficients of 3.638, 0.086 and −0.243, respectively, which once again verified that affective empathy can shape perceptual relationship and significantly improve students’ entrepreneurial confidence. Moreover, it can be preliminarily verified that the supporting environment perception negatively moderates the relationship between affective empathy and students’ entrepreneurial confidence.
In order to further explore the difference of one factor dependent on another at different levels, this study continues to conduct a simple effect analysis, as shown in Table 8. On the one hand, with fixed supporting environment perception, it was found that the supporting environment perception had no statistical significance on students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores at any levels of affective empathy (p > 0.05). On the other hand, with fixed affective empathy, it was found that the impact of affective empathy on students’ entrepreneurial confidence score (p < 0.001) had its statistical significance, when the supporting environment perception was at different levels. And when the supporting environment perception was medium, affective empathy had the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 175.720). When the supporting environment perception was very high, affective empathy had the least effect on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 25.647). In summary, for individuals with better supporting environment perceptions, the positive effect of affective empathy on students’ entrepreneurial confidence is weakened, while for individuals with poor supporting environment perceptions, affective empathy is more effective in positively influencing students’ entrepreneurial confidence, which means there is a significant moderating effect of the supporting environment, weakening the positive effect of affective empathy on the teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, and H5b was validated.
Results and discussion
Experiment 2 verified the impact of affective empathy on the teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations. The results showed that the entrepreneurial confidence between teachers and students in the affective empathy teaching group was smaller (M control group = 2.474, SD = 0.813, M experimental group = 0.246, SD = 0.373). This shows that teachers can fully mobilize students’ vitality and arouse students’ emotional resonance, by presenting entrepreneurial examples and creating a positive emotional atmosphere, thus eliminating the confidence segmentation between teachers and students.
Furthermore, for individuals with high or low affective empathy, individual conditions as well as supporting environment played a moderating role in eliminating teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations by affective empathy. In this experiment, when the supporting environment perception was medium, affective empathy had the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 175.720). When the supporting environment perception was very high, affective empathy had the least effect on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 25.647). However, the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation of the two groups of students with higher perception of their own conditions and supporting environment was weakened by affective empathy. This finding differed from cognitive empathy research. After carefully analyzing the experimental results, this study suggested that individuals who perceive their surroundings and conditions well, will have higher confidence in the possibilities and conditions of their entrepreneurship, so they will believe in and hold on to their own judgements. Such individuals are less likely to be affected by emotions from others, their entrepreneurial confidence more likely to be influenced by their own judgement, so teacher’s affective empathy could not have a significant impact on them. It shows that in the process of entrepreneurship education, teachers can carry out targeted teaching for different types of students, and for students with poor perception of their own condition and supporting environment, they can evoke students’ affective empathy through motivating teaching, to eliminate the confidence segmentation between teachers and students.
However, in addition to cognitive empathy and affective empathy, there is also affective bias in the emotional connection between teachers and students, and its impact on teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence should not be overlooked. At the same time, considering that the first two experiments only used students in W university as experimental objects, the universality of experimental results may be affected. Therefore, in order to more systematically explore the relationship between teacher-student emotional connection and entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, Experiment 3 was conducted based on the affective bias between teachers and students.
Experiment 3: non-negligible affective bias
Experiment 3 verify the impact of affective bias on the teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations (H3), At the same time, we explore the moderating mechanism of individual condition perception and supporting environment perception on affective bias in the process of entrepreneurship education. a one-way between-groups design was again employed, engaging a control group (affective bias without intervention) and an experimental group (affective bias with intervention). And each student was numbered and seated in order of number from smallest to largest.
Experimental design and procedures
In order to avoid potential bias in sample uniformity, 151 junior undergraduates from H university were selected as experimental participants for experiment 3. Meanwhile, to ensure the independence of the experiment, all participants had not engaged in other experiments before. According to the classification scheme of experiment 1, they were randomly assigned to two experimental groups in the form of male and female groups (the size of the two groups was the same, and there is no significant difference in their entrepreneurial intention and overall characteristics), and each student was numbered and seated in order from small to large.
Following the idea of Experiment 1. The same teacher (with high confidence in students’ entrepreneurship) gave a 45-min innovation and entrepreneurship course to the two groups of participants, which was whole-process videotaped. The affective bias of participants in the experimental group was intervened, while the teaching modes in two groups are the same. Specifically, in the teaching experiment of the control group, teachers adopted the teaching form of empathy, combined with successful entrepreneurial cases, used pictures, videos and other forms to convey entrepreneurial information and organize discussions to students in a positive and vivid tone, and guided students to feel the enthusiasm and vitality of entrepreneurship. The specific experiment situation is: At the beginning of the class, the teacher walks into the classroom with a smile on his face, plays the photos and videos of well-known entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurship stories and introduces them passionately, introducing the class theme of the day. In class, the teacher pay attention to students’ micro-expressions, raise discussion questions, guide students to think in relation to their own situations, and encourage them to actively express their ideas. Among them, a small number of students show irrational cognition and bias, due to previous entrepreneurial failure and stereotypes. The teacher did not pay special attention to the entrepreneurial bias of a small number of students, resulting in these students still holding worries about the prospect of entrepreneurship at the end of the class.
In the teaching experiment of the experimental group, on the basis of the empathic teaching form, the teacher pay special attention to the students’ views and cognition on entrepreneurship, and correct the wrong cognition in time from the students’ concerns. Teachers happily explain successful entrepreneurial cases and interesting entrepreneurial experiences to help students correct wrong images and intuitions to eliminate their affective bias on entrepreneurship. The detailed experimental scenario was as follows: after posing the question, the teacher focused on addressing the answers with some students’ irrational perceptions, pointed out their emotional problems, and guided them to abandon their prejudices, in order to correctly and objectively understand entrepreneurship. It not only helped some students to change their attitudes, but also give them great motivations. While the teacher’s positive feelings and attitudes successfully affected the students. The attitude of this group of students changed significantly from apprehensive to confident.
After the course, the participants were all asked to fill out a self-rated questionnaire on affective bias. Referred to the Adult Decision Making Competence (ADMC) scale designed by Bruine de Bruin et al. [69], and combined with the contextualized statements of this study, we conducted the Affective Bias (Decision-making Bias) Scale, which contained four items (“There are a lot of entrepreneurial failures around me, so I still won’t try to start a business”, “I have experience the failure of family business, which makes me afraid to set an entrepreneurship”, “I think the market environment is not clear enough, so I choose not to start an entrepreneurship”, and “I think my entrepreneurship will eventually face a failure, so I choose not to start my own business”), In order to more intuitively measure the impact of affective bias on the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students in the process of entrepreneurial education, this experiment adopted a 5-point Likert scale, (1 = very inconsistent, 5 = very consistent) [67]. The higher the score, the more students are affected by affective bias. In addition, teachers and students were equally required to complete the Entrepreneurial Confidence Scale, to measure the teacher-student entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, in the same manner as in Experiment 1.
Experimental results and analysis
Manipulation check and reliability test
11 miss-filled questionnaires were excluded, and collected 140 valid questionnaires. The average age of the participants was 20.562 years old (SD = 0.954), and 68.571% were female. In addition, the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the self-evaluated affective bias scale was 0.955, greater than 0.7, indicating good internal consistency and reliability level. To further test the effectiveness of manipulation in experiment 3 on affective bias, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used. As shown in Fig. 4, the affective bias score of the experimental group (experimental group M = 1.803, SD = 0.517) was significantly lower than that of the control group (control group M = 4.192, SD = 0.518). It shows that the manipulation on affective bias is effective.
Experiment 3—One-way ANOVA
Hypotheses test
First, we examine the influence of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence between teachers and students. Based on the results of one-way ANOVA in Fig. 4, the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation showed significant difference between the two experimental groups (P < 0.001). Compared with the traditional teaching control group, the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students in the teaching experimental group after the intervention of affective bias was smaller (M experimental group = 0.173, SD = 0.292; M control group = 2.428, SD = 0.779), students’ entrepreneurial confidence score was higher, so reducing affective bias could eliminate the confidence segmentation between teachers and students, and H3 was verified.
Second, we verified the moderating role of individual condition perception in the relationship between affective bias and students’ entrepreneurial confidence, which in this study focused on students’ family circumstances (living standard and income). Process model 1 was employed (Bootstrap sample: 5000) with 95% confidence intervals. The analysis results are shown in Table 9. The results show that the main effect of affective bias is significantly negative, the main effect of individual condition perception is significantly positive, and the interaction effect between affective bias and individual condition perception is significantly negative, with regression coefficients of −0.459, 0.502, and −0.069, respectively. This further validates that reducing affective bias can significantly improve students’ entrepreneurial confidence and eliminate the teacher–student confidence segmentation. Moreover, it can be preliminarily verified that individual condition perception can negatively moderate the relationship between affective bias and students’ entrepreneurial confidence.
In order to further explore the difference of one factor dependent on another at different levels, this study continues to conduct a simple effect analysis, as shown in Table 10. On the one hand, with fixed individual condition perception, it is found that the impact of individual condition perception on the students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.05) has its statistical significance, when the affective bias is at different levels. When the affective bias is very high, the individual condition perception has the least influence on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 6.401). When affective bias is low, individual condition perception has the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 117.431). On the other hand, with fixed affective bias, it was found that only when individual condition perception was medium, high or very high, the impact of affective bias on students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.01) had its statistical significance. And when individual condition perception is very high, affective bias has the least effect on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 11.377). In summary, for individuals with better individual condition perception, the negative effect of affective bias on their entrepreneurial confidence is weakened, which means the moderating effect of individual condition perception is significant, weakening the negative predictive effect of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence, and H4c was validated.
Last, we verified the moderating role of supporting environment perception in the relationship between affective bias and students’ entrepreneurial confidence, including local policies, school policies, and family support. With the method mentioned above, the analysis results are shown in Table 11. The results show that the main effect of affective bias is significantly negative, the main effect of supporting environment perception is significantly positive, and the interaction effect between affective bias and supporting environment perception is significantly negative, with regression coefficients of −0.465, 0.467, and −0.068, respectively. It is once again verified that reducing affective bias can significantly improve students’ entrepreneurial confidence and eliminate the confidence segmentation between teachers and students. Moreover, it can be preliminarily verified that supporting environment perception negatively moderates the relationship between affective bias and students’ entrepreneurial confidence.
In order to further explore the difference of one factor dependent on another at different levels, this study continues to conduct a simple effect analysis, as shown in Table 12. On the one hand, with fixed supporting environment perception, it is found that the impact of supporting environment perception on the students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.05) has its statistical significance, when the affective bias is at different levels. When the affective bias is very high, the supporting environment perception has the least influence on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 5.402). When affective bias is low, the supporting environment perception has the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 73.433). On the other hand, with fixed affective bias, it was found that only when the supporting environment perception was medium, high or very high, the impact of affective bias on students’ entrepreneurial confidence scores (p < 0.01) had its statistical significance. And when the supporting environment perception was medium, the affective bias had the greatest impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 29.440). When the supporting environment perception is high, the affective bias has the least impact on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 7.464). In summary, the negative effect of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence is weakened for individuals with a better supporting environment perception, while the negative effect of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence is strengthened for individuals with a worse supporting environment perception. It revealed that there is a significant moderating effect of the supporting environment, which weakens the negative predictive effect of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence, and H5c was validated.
Results and discussion
Experiment 3 examined the influence of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students. The results showed that the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students in the teaching experimental group after affective bias intervention was smaller (M experimental group = 0.173, SD = 0.292; M control group = 2.428, SD = 0.779), which indicates that entrepreneurial intention and decision-making of middle school students after entrepreneurial education are inevitably affected by affective bias, and intervention can eliminate the entrepreneurial confidence segmentation between teachers and students, and the educational effect is more obvious.
In addition, this study confirmed that individual conditions as well as supporting environment play a moderating role in the relationship between affective bias and entrepreneurial confidence segmentations, no matter how much the individuals are affected by affective bias. When the affective bias was very high, individual condition perception and supporting environment perception had the least influence on students’ entrepreneurial confidence (F = 6.401) and (F = 5.402), respectively. It may be due to the fact that students with lower perceptions of the supporting environment on entrepreneurship and individual conditions, are often influenced by their own experiences of failure or inherent perceptions. Therefore, they are more afraid to make an attempt, which increases the fear of failure, thus reinforcing the negative impact of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence. Therefore, in the process of entrepreneurship education, teachers can help such students improve their cognitive ability by imparting entrepreneurial knowledge and emotional guidance, so as to reduce the impact of affective bias on entrepreneurial confidence segmentation. In the process of the experiment, because the research variables of the experiment depend on personal psychological feelings, the participants often need to evaluate according to their own subjective judgment when filling in the questionnaire, which may lead to bias in the measurement of the research variables.
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