Abstract:
Reactions in response to the interruption of a self-defining task were investigated for committed and uncommitted students. In the present study, 215 college students were randomly divided into two groups and given the task of writing a 15-minute essay on how to be a "good" student under the ostensible belief their essays would potentially be used for instructive purposes. In the experimental group, subjects were interrupted within 5 minutes after the beginning of the essay task with a self-symbolizing questionnaire. The control group was not interrupted and completed the same self-symbolizing questionnaire after the essay task was complete. Final results suggest that interrupted highly-committed subjects were significantly less likely to report making student-related mistakes than highly committed non-interrupted subjects.
