Turning the knots in your stomach into bows: Reappraising arousal improves performance on the GRE

Abstract

This research examined the benefits of interpreting physiological arousal as a challenge response on practice and actual Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores. Participants who were preparing to take the GRE reported to the laboratory for a practice GRE study. Participants assigned to a reappraisal condition were told arousal improves performance, whereas control participants were not given this information. We collected saliva samples at baseline and after the appraisal manipulation, which were then assayed for salivary alpha amylase (sAA), a measure of sympathetic nervous system activation. Reappraisal participants exhibited a significant increase in sAA and outperformed controls on the GRE-math section. One to three months later, participants returned to the lab and provided their score reports from their actual GRE. Again, reappraisal participants scored higher than controls on the GRE-math section. These findings illuminate the powerful influence appraisal has on physiology and performance both in and out of the laboratory."Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts." -Albert EinsteinAlthough high-stakes standardized tests, such as the SAT and Graduate Record Examination (GRE), influence whether students will be accepted to or rejected from desired academic programs, the above quote illustrates the necessity of considering factors other than aptitude and ability when evaluating standardized test performance. For instance, test-takers may feel an increase in arousal, or "nervous energy," which may be interpreted as anxiety or threat, and be associated with poor performance (Cassaday & Johnson, 2002).However, arousal is a fuzzy term semantically and psychologically (Blascovich, 1992). Arousal increases co-occur with a variety of emotional, cognitive, and motivational states and do not necessarily indicate a negative state such as anxiety or threat. Arousal increases can also indicate that the body is mobilizing resources to meet the task demands and could signal an approach orientation or challenge response. Because of its association with both benign and deleterious psychological and physiological states, arousal has been at the center of several classic theories in social psychology as the proposed mediator of behavioral outcomes. From Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. More specifically with regards to reappraisal, Gross argues that appraisal processes occur early in the emotion-generative process, and the downstream outcome (the experienced emotion) is most easily altered by changing appraisals of...

RETRACTED: Don’t stop believing: Rituals improve performance by decreasing anxiety

“…Research converges to suggest that two strategies can effectively reduce anxious arousal: expressive writing (Pennebaker, 1997;Ramirez & Beilock, 2011) and emotional reappraisal (Crum, Salovey, & Achor, 2013;Gross, 2002;Hofmann, Heering, Sawyer, & Asnaani, 2009;Jamieson, Mendes, Blackstock, & Schmader, 2010). For instance, one of the most pervasive clinical techniques for reducing anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy, based on principles of reappraisal (Webb, Miles, & Sheeran, 2012).…”

Female peers in small work groups enhance women's motivation, verbal participation, and career aspirations in engineering

“…RAs were unaware that group sex composition was the experimental manipulation; they believed variations in group composition were a natural part of scheduling. After participants got acquainted with their teammates, but before they started the group task, they were taken to private cubicles where they worked on the engineering problems alone, after which we assessed how threatened or positively challenged they felt in anticipation of the group task using reliable self-report measures (35,36,37,40). Participants then worked with their teammates on the engineering problems for 15 min.…”

“…The dependent variable was the ratio of self-reported threat vs. challenge, which captured the relative degree of threat compared with challenge participants experienced (35)(36)(37). A ratio greater than 1 would indicate participants felt more threatened than challenged by the group activity.…”

Regulación Emocional Y Desempeño Académico: Revisión Sistemática De Sus Relaciones Empíricas

“…Por ejemplo, la implementación de la reevaluación cognitiva mejoró el rendimiento en tareas de matemáticas (BeenZeev, Fein, & Inzlicht, 2005;Jamieson et al, 2010;Johns et al, 2008), el recuerdo para información educativa tanto en adultos (Leroy et al, 2012) como en niños de escolaridad primaria (Davis & Levine, 2013) y su frecuencia de uso autoinformada se asoció positivamente con la tendencia a completar tareas en dicho dominio académico (Xu et al, 2015(Xu et al, , 2016. Sin embargo, su implementación no mejoró el rendimiento en tareas de lectura , ni se observaron asociaciones positivas de su frecuencia de uso autoinformada con el rendimiento en pruebas estandarizadas de matemáticas (Xu et al, 2015(Xu et al, , 2016 y de conocimiento disciplinar específico (Hafizah & Hafiz, 2015).…”

“…Respecto de la estrategia manejo emocional, los trabajos de Johns et al (2008), Jamieson et al (2010) y Leroy et al (2012) hallaron que instruir a los participantes para que implementaran esta estrategia repercutió positivamente en el rendimiento en tareas de matemáticas Johns et al, 2008) y en el recuerdo de material educativo (Leroy et al, 2012). Mediante la utilización de cuestionarios de autoinforme, Xu et al (2015Xu et al ( , 2016 observaron asociaciones positivas entre los resultados de pruebas estandarizadas de matemáticas y el manejo emocional.…”