Autonomy and self-talk on problem-solving

Abstract

This study to investigate how autonomy and different pronominal person self-talk may affect people’s performance of well-structured problems. A total of 111(69 female and 42 male) young adults were randomly assigned to different groups of the 2 (autonomy-supportive vs. Non-autonomy) x3 (I-self talk, You-self talk, Control group) experiment. In this study, we recorded the task accuracy, subjective interest and intention (9 point Likert scale) toward the task switching paradigm. Statistical results showed that participants turn to be more accurate in the you-self talk group than in the I self-talk group and control group. Inconsistent with previous findings, we also found that non-autonomy group showed statistically significant more interests in doing the task than the autonomy-supportive group. Related updated studies and Chinese culture were used to explore the interesting findings and discuss the implications. The sensitivity to the power and hierarchical order play an important role in explaining the research results.