The task can be repeated for up to 200 rounds of random shapes. After 75 rounds, a button labelled “Give up” appears on screen, giving the participant the option to skip to the second task. The wording of the label was intentionally chosen instead of a more neutral “Stop” or “Continue to next task” to elicit a stronger social response (“Giving up” being more socially costly than simply “continuing to the next task”), thereby increasing the contrast between conditions (self-presentation effect). During this first task, we record three metrics: the reaction time for each round, the number of correct and incorrect responses, the total number of rounds completed (dependent on when the “Give up” button was used). We also asked the participants to give an estimate of how many rounds they thought they had completed, between 0 and 300 and if they felt like they were being observed during the test.

We need to give the results on the answer of being observed in the questionnaire, I remember that we said they were felt like they were being observed in the alone condition as well (for both studies), that would be a good argument for the Hawthorne effect

The second task (‘story’ task) involves listening to a short pre-recorded text (1min 56sec) and answering eight questions about this text. The text11Recording and transcript available on-line, at [hidden for blind review]. details the history of a fictional country named “Brookland” and includes a range of facts: names of places (“[they] sailed to Port Danford”), dates (“Springland was settled in the year 2503”), terminology (“Settlers or ’squatters’ began to move deeper into the territories”), and situations (“Women were outnumbered five to one”). The text was based upon the settling of Australia, but with key details and place names changed. This was so that the information would certainly be novel, without sounding implausible. The eight multiple-choice questions are administered immediately after the end of the text. Each question provides a choice of four answers (Figure \ref{fig:text-questions}). The score of each participant (number of correct answers) is the performance metric for this task.