Reflection among work group members: Identifying promising traits and cognitive outcomes

Certain stimuli cause people to rethink or think through their thoughts, feelings and actions. This practice is referred to as reflection. People are said to improve performance in assignments or project work because of reflection practices. It is argued, for instance, that reflection could help an individual adopt multiple frames of reference. As such, reflection identifies different pathways to cognition, thus facilitating to look at a problem from different angles.Reflection is often categorized among educational, developmental or learning practices and as such involves cognitive processing. One of the objectives in this study is to identify the cognitive efforts that characterize reflective learning. Knowing whether reflection implies complex cognitive processing could influence our understanding about ‘out of the box thinking’ and innovation. Furthermore, reflection does not take place all the time and in every place. Reflection occurs now and than, and as such is considered a trait or disposition. The trait approach on reflection holds that people vary in their inclination to question argumentation. A second objective in this study, therefore, is to determine whether reflection is a trait or not. In the instance that some of the cognitive merits attributed to reflection are valid, HRM could for example identify reflective competencies. This study aims to demonstrate the prevalence of reflection as a trait and its relatedness to cognitive style. By means of a survey university students are questioned about their learning practices when working on their thesis. These students attend student groups called thesis circles, in which they apart from receiving feedback also reviewed each other’s work. The questionnaire includes items on need for cognition, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion, cognitive complexity and (private) self-consciousness. To test whether traits influence private reflection and whether private reflection produces cognitive and affective outcomes at the individual level, we perform hierarchical regression analysis. In addition, structural equation modeling is used to test for the mediation effects of private reflection. The data stress the moderating role of reflection in the relationship between particular traits and cognitive outcomes.