Would you stop worrying about it already?\u00a0 Just write it down and you’ll do just fine.<\/p>\n
Or so says the University of Chicago.\u00a0 They recently completed a study in which they asked college students to take a math test.\u00a0 But, before the test, the researchers intentionally stressed the students out.\u00a0 The students were told that they would be paid a cash prize based on their results, and that the test-taking would be videotaped and watched by senior members of the university’s math department.\u00a0 The students were then broken into two different groups.\u00a0 The first group was told to sit quietly and collect their thoughts in advance of the test.\u00a0 The second group was told to write down their anxieties about their upcoming test performance.\u00a0 And guess what?\u00a0 The students who put their fears down on paper outscored the sit-and-thinkers by 17%.<\/p>\n
And it worked in the real world too.\u00a0 A group of 9th<\/sup> grade biology students facing their upcoming final were evaluated for their anxiety levels.\u00a0 The researchers then divided the highest-anxiety kids into two groups, and advised one group to write down their fears before taking the test.\u00a0\u00a0 As a result, those who expressed themselves averaged a B+ on the final, and those who didn’t averaged a B-.<\/p>\n Psychologists have long believed that anxiety impedes performance, but this is first time they’ve been able to show how reducing stress improves it. \u00a0This dynamic may be relevant to other real-world situations like giving a speech or playing in a big game.\u00a0 The next step in the research is to monitor the brain activity of participants and map the relationship between anxiety, expression, and performance.<\/p>\n In the mean time, perhaps this would be a good New Year’s resolution.\u00a0 Stop freaking out.\u00a0 Instead, just paraphrase the old World War 1 marching tune: \u00a0scratch out your troubles on a legal pad and perform, perform, perform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Would you stop worrying about it already?\u00a0 Just write it down and you’ll do just fine. Or so says the University of Chicago.\u00a0 They recently completed a study in which they asked college students to take a math test.\u00a0 But, before the test, the researchers intentionally stressed the students out.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[67,936,1176,1220,1376],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6","tag-anxiety","tag-performance","tag-stress","tag-test-scores","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}