The effects of relevant instructor self-disclosure on student affect and cognitive learning: A live lecture experiment

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this teaching experiment was to examine the causal effect of relevant (compared to irrelevant) instructor self-disclosure on student affect and cognitive learning. Undergraduate students (N = 288) were randomly assigned to a 19-minute classroom lecture with an instructor who taught the same lesson but self-disclosed either relevant or irrelevant information while teaching. Results indicated that relevant instructor self-disclosure increased student affect in students’ likelihood to enroll with the instructor again but did not influence students’ general affect toward the instructor. Findings also revealed a direct effect of self-disclosure relevance on students’ test scores; on average, students scored 8.42% higher on a short-term recall test compared to students in the irrelevant self-disclosure condition, controlling for lesson coherence. Practical implications are provided for how instructors might use relevant self-disclosures in their teaching.

KEYWORDS:

• instructor self-disclosure
• relevance
• affect
• clarity
• cognitive learning

Acknowledgements

This manuscript is based on the first author’s dissertation, which was directed by the second author. The authors would like to thank Scott A. Myers, Matthew M. Martin, and Angela M. Hosek for their helpful feedback.

Notes

1 The PowerPoint presentation, lesson scripts (with the highlighted instructor self-disclosures), 15-item test, self-disclosure times, and lecture video links can be found at https://figshare.com/s/dfc0c6827e66261ca6d8

2 These data were collected February 19–20, 2020 in a traditional in-person classroom environment. Data collection took place approximately one month before many higher education officials became concerned with the spread of COVID-19 and limited in-person classes. The pandemic has led to lifestyle changes that have negatively impacted college students’ mental health (Huckins et al., 2020). Given that this study was conducted in a traditional classroom setting before the pandemic, future researchers should consider controlling for student stressors related to the pandemic, as teaching–learning studies must account for changes to higher education (e.g., COVID-related anxiety and/or stress, online teaching, etc.).

3 The full post hoc validation study can be found at https://figshare.com/s/dfc0c6827e66261ca6d8