Alone With My Thoughts But Also My Feelings: Neuroticism and the Effect of Reflection on Performance

Abstract

The current research on reflection largely finds that reflection benefits performance. Most of this research has focused on the cognitive implications of reflection. We argue that when we account for the affective consequences of reflection, the link between reflection and performance becomes less clear-cut. Drawing from self-regulation theory, we argue that neuroticism, an affective personality trait governing individuals’ emotional responses, moderates the relationship between reflection and performance. We hypothesize that individuals who are high in neuroticism are likely to experience less positive emotions and more negative emotions when they reflect on their work. These emotions limit their ability to realize the performance benefits of reflection. We conducted two weekly experience sampling studies to test our hypotheses. Study 1 involved a sample of mid- to top-level global executives (N = 101). Study 2 involved a sample of online platform workers (N = 202). In both studies, we found that neuroticism prevented individuals from reaping the positive performance benefits of reflection, and even led reflection to hurt certain types of performance (i.e., extra-role performance in Study 1). In Study 2, we also found that positive emotions, but not negative emotions, played an important mediating role. For workers low in neuroticism, reflection amplified their positive emotions and therefore their performance improved. However, those high in neuroticism had a muted positive emotional response when engaging in reflection and thus their performance did not improve.