All over the world; measures have been implemented to contain the novel Sars-CoV-2 virus since its outbreak in the beginning of 2020. These measures—among which social distancing and contact restrictions were most prominent—may have an overall effect on people’s psychological well-being. The present study seeks to examine whether lockdown measures affected people’s well-being; anxiety; depressive symptoms during the lockdown and whether these effects could be explained by reduced satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy and relatedness. N = 1086 participants of different ages and educational levels from all over Germany reported strong declines in autonomy and well-being; small declines in relatedness satisfaction; moderate increases in anxiety and depressive symptoms. These effects were stronger for people with moderate to bad subjective overall health. Latent change modeling revealed that, especially, decreases in autonomy satisfaction led to stronger decreases in well-being as well as stronger increases in anxiety and depressive symptoms; whereas decreases in relatedness had much weaker effects. Our results imply differential effects depending on individual preconditions; but also more generally that peoples’ need for autonomy was most strongly affected by the lockdown measures, which should be considered as important information in planning future lockdowns.

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Self-esteem plays a decisive role for students in achievement situations. However, it is still unclear how different self-esteem facets and their interactions influence academic achievement and which psychological mechanisms mediate these relationships. In Study 1, we investigated self-handicapping and effort-management as mediators of the effects of self-esteem facets on academic Study 2 achievement in a sample of N = 600 university students, while in we examined test anxiety as mediating variable in a sample of N = 1052 school students. Path analyses revealed various relations between self-esteem facets, learning strategies, test anxiety, and academic achievement. Moreover, effort-management and test anxiety were identified as meaningful mediators of the effects of self-esteem facets. Implications for further research and for educational practice are discussed.

Zusammenfassung. Der Selbstwert ist eines der am häufigsten untersuchten Konstrukte der Psychologie. Lange verfolgte die Forschung zum Selbstwert einen variablenzentrierten Ansatz, mit dem lediglich die einzelnen Selbstwertfacetten betrachtet wurden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden erstmalig verschiedene Kombinationen von Selbstwerthöhe, -stabilität und -kontingenz untersucht und deren Korrelate im Lern- und Leistungskontext analysiert. In latenten Profilanalysen konnten in drei Online-Studien (ngesamt = 2499) neben dem Profil des „optimalen Selbstwerts“ ( Kernis, 2003 ) vier weitere Selbstwertprofile identifiziert werden. Diese Selbstwertprofile gehen mit unterschiedlichen Konsequenzen einher. So weist etwa das Profil „optimaler Selbstwert“ die günstigsten Ergebnismuster auf, was sich beispielhaft in einer häufigen Nutzung tiefenorientierter Lernstrategien niederschlägt. Insgesamt legen die Befunde nahe, dass eine mehrdimensionale Betrachtung des Selbstwerts präzisere Verhaltensvorhersagen ermöglicht. Implikationen für die weitere Forschung und Praxis werden diskutiert.

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