perhaps there was a place dependence to the effect - the feelings of value got anchored to the location you felt them in
I think that's the mechanism the authors believe in; the place or context of the science classroom becomes less intimidating when the first thing they did in the semester is prime themselves with confidence.
You can defy the data if you like, but it seems pretty plausible to me.
I think that's the mechanism the authors believe in; the place or context of the science classroom becomes less intimidating when the first thing they did in the semester is prime themselves with confidence.
What did they write that gave you that impression?
Robin Hanson recently mentioned "writing therapy" as potentially having surprisingly large benefits. In the example he gives, recently unemployed engineers who write about their experience find jobs more quickly than those that did not.
The meta-analysis paper he links to was pretty lame, but I found another meta-analysis, "Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis", on a somewhat broader topic of Experimental Disclosure that appears to be much better.
My judgment is non-expert, but it looks to me like a very high quality meta-analysis. The authors use a large number of studies (146) and include a large number of potential moderators, discuss their methodology in detail, and address publication bias intelligently.
The authors find small to moderate positive effects on measures of psychological health, physiological health and general life outcomes. They also find a number of interesting moderating factors.