The Effects of Self-Awareness and Self-Reflective Writing on Online Task Performance

This study examined self-awareness and self-reflective writing effects on performance in an online task environment. Participants (N = 98) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: self-awareness (private vs. public) and self-reflection (reflection vs. no-reflection). They were instructed to complete two successive online survival tasks that required analytical thinking and problem-solving skills. Findings demonstrated that participants in the private self-awareness condition performed better after writing a self-reflection than the no self-reflection condition. However, participants in the public self-awareness condition performed worse in the second task upon completion of their self-reflection compared with those that did not write a self-reflection. Additionally, a post-hoc linguistic analysis of the self-reflections illustrated that high-performers discussed their task completion using more cognitively complex language compared to low-performers.