Stress experience and performance during an oral exam: the role of self-efficacy, threat appraisals, anxiety, and cortisol

Abstract

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Analyzing Relationships Between Causal and Assessment Factors of Cognitive Load: Associations Between Objective and Subjective Measures of Cognitive Load, Stress, Interest, and Self-Concept

“…The assumed and (at least partly) confirmed lack of a relationship between objective stress measurements and perceived stress might result from the differences between physiological and psychological stress responses, which-like mental load-corresponds with the complexity of a task (e.g., Kahneman and Peavler, 1969;Veltman and Gaillard, 1993;Hjortskov et al, 2004;Minkley and Kirchner, 2012): According to the transactional stress model of Lazarus and Folkman (1984) and the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat (Blascovich and Mendes, 2000;Blascovich, 2008), stress is the result of the interplay between situational demands and individual resources. Thus, the perception of high demands and low resources creates the feeling of being stressed and raises various physiological responses (e.g., decreased heart rate variability, increased cortisol secretion; Rensing et al, 2006) which are often not related to the respondents' perceived stress (for a review see Campbell and Ehlert, 2012). Several studies which already investigated the association between physiological (primarily cortisol secretion) and psychological (perceived stress or anxiety) stress responses reported heterogeneous results (for a review see Campbell and Ehlert, 2012).…”

Understanding Emotion-Related Processes in Classroom Activities Through Functional Measurements

“…Some recent studies in real-life exam settings tried to include objective physiological measurements such as salivary cortisol tests to other psychological self-report variables such as self-efficacy or threat and anxiety appraisal (Ringeisen et al, 2018). Although cortisol correlate contributes to the objective measurement of stress reactions, this method is rather limited in studying classroom emotions as it does not allow measuring short-term changes of behavior during an exam or a test, or during a short class assessment activity.…”

“…The necessity of physiological markers of emotional reactivity in educational research has been emphasized by the psychological and educational literature (Ringeisen et al, 2018). Most studies focused on laboratory activated variables: challenge or threat (Fonseca et al, 2014), or self-efficacy (Schönfeld et al, 2017), and suggested that these variables are related to neuroendocrine stress responses and affect performance.…”

Impact of Divergent Thinking Training on Teenagers’ Emotion and Self-Efficacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Self-efficacy, a belief in one's ability to achieve a desirable outcome, was proposed by Bandura (1977). Several studies have proved that self-efficacy is effective in reducing stress and generating coping strategies for individuals facing stressful life events (Saccinto et al, 2013;Marceron and Rohrbeck, 2019;Ringeisen et al, 2019). During the COVID-19 pandemic, selfefficacy has played a positive role in maintaining optimism and mental health (Garris and Fleck, 2020;Kebede et al, 2020;Tabernero et al, 2020).…”