| Chapter 2: | Chatrooms and Small Group Learning |
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To test this theory, Matheson and Zanna (1988) had groups of students perform a conjunctive experimental task, and then fill out a survey measuring public and private self-awareness. The survey metric [(Prentice-Dunn & Rogers, 1982 based on Fenigstein, Scheier & Buss, 1975)] aimed to separate individually varying, situation-independent self-awareness (i.e., chronic self-awareness) from more global, situation-dependent self-awareness (i.e., acute self-awareness). Results from this study indicate that small group interaction in online environments induces higher levels of acute private self-awareness, while marginally lowering public self-awareness (Matheson & Zanna, 1988). In other words, individuals in online environments seem to be much more aware of their own motivations, and a little less concerned about what others think. There is suggestive evidence from other studies, however, that public self-awareness is lowered in online environments when power hierarchies, such as teacher-student relationships, are present (e.g., Kern, 1995; Hudson & Bruckman, 2004), perhaps because of increased public self-awareness in these face-to-face environments.
There is also evidence that confidence levels mediate the relationship between public self-awareness and inhibition. Public self-awareness seems to interact with confidence through a process termed social facilitation (Zajonc, 1965; Bond & Titus, 1983). Specifically, highly confident students tend to perform better when they have high public self-awareness (i.e., when they are observed by others). Low confidence students, however, do better when public self-awareness is low (i.e., when they are not observed by others).