"People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure.
A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure.
"The pressure causes verbal worries, like ‘Oh no, I can’t screw up,’" said Sian Beilock, assistant professor of psychology at Miami University of Ohio. "These thoughts reside in the working memory." And that takes up space that would otherwise be pondering the task at hand.
"When they begin to worry, then they’re in trouble," Beilock told LiveScience. "People with lower working-memory capacities are not using that capacity to begin with, so they’re not affected by pressure."
The findings are detailed this week’s issue of Psychological Science.
Working memory, also known as short-term memory, holds information that is relevant to performance and ensures task focus. It’s what allows us to remember and retrieve information from an early step of a long task, such as long-division math.
"In these math problems students have to perform subtraction and division, and if you’re trying to hold information in your memory and you start worrying about performance, then you can’t use your entire mental capacity to do the math," Beilock explained."
This story came out a while ago but I still found it to be of interest. The point here is simple, stop worrying or it might affect your performance. Read the whole thing here.
6 comments:
"The point here is simple, stop worrying or it might affect your performance."
Who needs psychiatrists when we have Jack?
But it doesn't work. The subconscious can only be manipulated by the conscious to a certain degree. You can convince yourself that you shouldn't worry, your feelings have a will of their own. It isn't a switch you can put on or off.
It's better that the value of tests/exams should be adjusted to confirm these scientific insights. Meaning that the value of tests should be devalued immediately.
But it is basically common sense. People prove their competence and knowledge over time, not during a snapshot that is a test.
But it doesn't work. The subconscious can only be manipulated by the conscious to a certain degree. You can convince yourself that you shouldn't worry, your feelings have a will of their own. It isn't a switch you can put on or off.
Zeruel,
Hypnotherapy says otherwise.
Tziporah,
I didn't write the study, just posted about it.
"Hypnotherapy says otherwise."
Ok, if you have the time and the circumstance to transfix on diving into the subconscious. But you will also know that hypnotherapy conjures up emotions and memories that are not deliberately pursued. If there is one thing that retracts itself from direct conscious control, it's hypnotherapy.
Your example, therefore, doesn't make sense.
"Emotions sure as heck can hamper the effectiveness of information input and processing, but they operate out of different parts of the brain."
The brain is not a compartmentalized file storage room. It's a neural network that operates by association and recognition. Emotions are an importand part of that network and as such have significant influence on processing and recalling information.
Espescially under stress certain areas of the brain will be signaled that take precedence over memory(for example). So emotions really do have influence on recalling information and in a major way.
Zeruel,
There are professions that require people make snap decisions that are not based upon emotion.
You can train and train to become more than competent to handle these decisions. You can practice with such regularity that the actions accompanied with these decisions are second nature.
You can use hypnosis to help you maintain a sense of calm and clarity so that you do not succumb to emotional overload.
It makes perfect sense to discuss techniques of not allowing stress to dictate how you respond.
Snap decisions are based on a gut feeling. You don't have the time to measure all different possibilities in a systematic procedure. So you do what 'feels' right and not necessarily what 'is' right.
I agree that you can learn to cope with your emotions and don't let them dictate your behavior.
But this only goes so far. Thought processes inherently inhibit emotions. The desire not to be overwhelmed by emotions is an emotion in itself.
You could say insecurity or stress derives from the thought mechanism that you often look at yourself through the eyes of others. Prestige and honor, and their opposite emotions embarrassment and anxiety; only have meaning because there is the ability of empathy.
So 'fear of failing' is basically advanced empathy. There are exceptions, and they are called psychopaths. I don't only mean the killing kind, but also the 'functional' kind. Those that have disturbed function of empathy, but compensate this with shrewd calculation. Often these people run big corporations or are very succesful in making money. Because 'failing' is meaningless to them.
In many ways it's a bliss to be a functional psychopath.
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