Tag Archives: coping

Are You Excited Yet? Anxiety as “Excitement” to Improve Performance

Alison Wood Brooks

People can improve task performance in public speaking, mathematical problem solving, and karaoke singing, by reappraising anxiety as “excitement,” according to Harvard’s Alison Wood Brooks.

Using silent self-talk messages (“I am excited”) or reading self-direction messages (“Get excited!”) fosters an “opportunity mind-set” by increasing alignment between physical arousal and situational appraisal.

Jeremy Jamieson

“Excitement” is typically viewed as a positive, pleasant emotion that can improve performance, according to Harvard’s Jeremy Jamieson and colleagues.

In contrast, anxiety drains working memory capacity, and decreases self-confidence, self-efficacy, and performance before or during a task, according to Michael W. Eysenck of University of London.

Despite these differences, anxiety and excitement have similar physiological arousal profiles, but different effects on performance.

Michael Eysenck

Efforts to transform anxiety into calmness can be ineffective due to the large shift from negative emotion to neutral or positive emotion and from physiological activation to lower arousal levels, noted Brooks.

Stefan Hofmann

Such efforts to calm physiological arousal during anxiety can result in a paradoxical increase in the suppressed emotion, reported Stefan Hofmann and colleagues of Boston University.
However, most people in Woods’ studies said they believed that this is the best way to handle anxiety.

Stanley Schachter

Physiological similarities can confuse experiences of anxiety and excitement, demonstrated in studies by Columbia’s Stanley Schacter and Jerome Singer of SUNY.
Anxiety’s similarity to excitement can be used to relabel high “anxiety” as “excitement.”
This shift can mitigate anxiety’s negative impact on performance.

Jerome Singer

Brooks elicited anxiety among volunteers by telling them that they their task was to present an impromptu, videotaped speech.

For some participants, she explained that it is “normal” to feel discomfort and asked them to “take a realistic perspective on this task by recognising that there is no reason to feel anxious” and “the situation does not present a threat to you…there are no negative consequences...”
She also instructed volunteers to say aloud randomly-assigned self-statements like “I am excited.”

People who stated “I am excited” before their speech were rated as more persuasive, more competent, more confident, and more persistent (spoke longer), than participants who said “I am calm.”

Brooks evaluated peoples’ reactions to another anxiety-provoking task, performing a karaoke song for an audience, and rated by voice recognition software for “singing accuracy” based on:

Volume (quiet-loud),
Pitch (distance from true pitch),
Note duration (accuracy of breaks between notes).

This score determined participants’ payment for participating in the study.

Before performing, she asked participants to make a randomly-assigned self-statement:

“I am anxious,”
“I am excited,”
“I am calm,”
“I am angry.”
“I am sad.”
No statement.

Following their performance, volunteers rated their anxiety, excitement, and confidence in their singing ability.
People who said that they were “excited” had higher pulse rates than other groups, confirming that self-statements can affect physical experiences of emotion.

Volunteers who said “I am excited” had the highest scores for singing accuracy and also for confidence in singing ability.

In contrast, those who said, “I am anxious” had the lowest scores for singing accuracy, suggesting that anxiety is associated with lower performance.

Brooks elicited anxiety on “a very difficult IQ test…under time pressure” that would determine their payment for participation.
To evoke further anxiety, she concluded, “Good luck minimising your loss.”

Before the test, participants read a statement:

“Try to remain calm” or
“Try to get excited.”

Those instructed to “get excited” produced more correct answers than those who tried to “remain calm.”

Reappraising anxiety as “excitement” increased the subjective experience of “excitement” instead of anxiety, and improved subsequent performance in each of these tasks.

Stéphane Côté

These reappraisals of physical experiences evoked an “opportunity mind-set” and a “stress-is-enhancing” mind-set, found University of Toronto’s Stéphane Côté and Christopher Miners.
These appraisals enabled superior performance across different anxiety-arousing situations.

In contrast, i nauthentic emotional displays can be physically and psychologically demanding, and often reduce performance.

People have “profound control and influence…over…emotions,” according to Woods.
She noted that “Saying ‘I am excited’ represents a simple, minimal intervention…to prime an opportunity mind-set and improve performance…

Advising employees to say ‘I am excited’ before important performance tasks or simply encouraging them to ‘get excited’ may increase their confidence, improve performance, and boost beliefs in their ability to perform well in the future.”

-*How effective have you found focusing on “excitement” instead of “calm” in managing anxiety?

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©Kathryn Welds

Rationalisation: Coping or Complacency?

Recognizing, Coping with Long-Lasting Emotions

Emotional Awareness Enables Focus, Risk-taking Even When “Stressed”

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Jeremy Yip

Greater emotional understanding enables people to quell the “incidental emotion” of anxiety while they focus on decisions, according to Wharton’s Jeremy Yip and Stéphane Côté of University of Toronto.

Stéphane Côté

Incidental emotions that influence decision-making have been called “the affect heuristic” by University of Oregon’s Paul Slovic, Melissa Finucane of the East-West Center, Ohio State’s Ellen Peters, and Donald MacGregor, then of Decision Research.

Paul Slovic

People with greater emotional intelligence can separate unpleasant thoughts and feelings from decision making and are less likely to show the affect heuristic bias in risky decisions.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud considered this ability to separate unpleasant thoughts and feelings as a defense mechanism deployed unconsciously to reduce anxiety and preserve self-esteem.
He called this experience “isolation,” contrasted with “compartmentalization,” which he defined as separating unpleasant emotions from each other.

Roy Baumeister

Florida State’s Roy F. Baumeister, with Karen Dale then of Case Western, and Baruch College’s Kristin L. Sommer, documented recent studies that demonstrate “isolation” as a defense mechanism or coping strategy to contain negative feelings, “emotional contagion,” and “spillover.”

John Mayer

Yip and Côté demonstrated the relationship among emotional intelligence, evoked anxiety and propensity to make riskier choices in their lab studies of more than 100 volunteers, who completed the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test developed by Yale’s Peter Salovey and David R. Caruso with John D. Mayer of University of New Hampshire.

David R Caruso

One group received an anxiety-provoking assignment: One minute to prepare a videotaped speech shown to peers studying “academic and social standing” at the university.
The other group was given a less stressful assignment: Prepare a grocery list.

Volunteers in both groups could choose their compensation for participating in the study: Receive $1, or take a one in 10 chance to receive $10.

Melissa Finucane

For those given the stressful speech-writing task, people who scored higher on emotional intelligence chose the riskier option to receive $10 three times as often as those who scored lower on emotional intelligence.

In contrast, volunteers who completed the low-stress task made similar choices for compensation no matter the level of emotional intelligence.

Ellen Peters

However, people can learn emotional awareness skills to enable mental focus and contain unrelated incidental emotions, according to related studies by Yip and Côté.

They demonstrated this ability to contain anxiety when some volunteers in the speech-writing task were told they “might feel worried” because making a speech is an anxiety-producing task.
Other speech-creators received no further instructions.

Kristin Sommer

Yip and Côté “primed” no emotion among some grocery list-creators by saying that they “may feel no emotion” or no instructions.
Participants were then primed to separate their emotions from their decision-making by being told that their emotions were irrelevant to their decisions.

Volunteers read information about the benefits of receiving flu injections and consequences of no inoculation during flu season.
Then participants were given the option to register for nearby flu injection clinic.

The reminder that emotions were irrelevant to decisions changed previous results, by increasing the frequency that participants with lower emotional awareness chose the riskier option of not attending the flu injection clinic.

The findings suggest that adults can reduce emotional bias in decision-making by explicitly identifying emotions and separating them from critical thinking processes

Questions that enable people to separate emotions, thoughts, and decisions include:

How do I feel right now?
What is causing me to feel that way?
And are my feelings relevant to the decision I need to make?

-*How do you avoid the affect heuristic when making decisions?

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Evidence-Based Stress Management – Physical Exercise – Part 5 of 5

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Michael Hopkins-David Bucci

“The positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to handle stress in other forms,” argue Michael Hopkins, FC Davis, Michelle VanTieghem, Paul Whalen and David Bucci of Dartmouth.

Michelle VanTieghem

They compared effects of a single exercise session or repeated sessions on non-exercising volunteers who were genotyped to determine brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a nerve growth factor important in long-term memory.

Paul Whalen

Participants were measured on novel object recognition (NOR) memory and mental health dimensions before and after engaging in a 4-week exercise program or a single exercise session.

More frequent exercisers performed better on object recognition memory and said they experienced less stress, but only when their 4 week program included a final test.
In contrast, a single exercise session did not affect recognition memory and resulted in increased perceived stress levels.

This study found no relationship between exercise-induced cognitive benefits and changes in mood and anxiety, suggesting that perceived stress is controlled by a different neural system.

Timothy Schoenfeld

In contrast, Princeton’s Timothy Schoenfeld, Pedro Rada, Pedro Pieruzzini, Brian Hsueh, and Elizabeth Gould, reported different results with mice.
They investigated the paradox of exercise: It promotes new, excitable brain cells that can aid learning and memory, yet exercise can induce calm in various brain areas.

Elizabeth Gould

Schoenfeld and team controlled for pre-existing nervousness in adult mice and allowed half to exercise and half to remain sedentary over a six week period.

Exercisers were more willing to cautiously explore and spend time in open areas, suggesting they were more confident and less anxious than their sedentary counterparts.

Brian Hsueh

The runners’ brains developed new, excitable neurons in the hippocampus’ ventral region, associated with processing emotions and releasing GABA, which inhibits brain activity such as the subjective experience of anxiety.

All animals encountered the physical stress of cold water for five minutes, and showed many immediate early genes indicating neuron firing.
However, the runner rats calmed more rapidly due to their release of GABA after this physical stress.

Though this study was conducted with animals, the findings suggest that physical exercise builds capacity to recover more rapidly from stress by regulating anxiety through ventral hippocampus inhibition.

Brett Klika

Like other stress management recommendations, regular exercise is difficult for many to adopt as an habit.
For reluctant exercisers, Brett Klika and Chris Jordan of Human Performance Institute offer a rapid but challenging solution: “Seven Minutes of Steady Discomfort.”

Chris Jordan

Their Scientific 7-Minute Workout includes 12 exercises using a chair, wall and body weight, for interval training alternating large muscles in the upper and lower body.
Each exercise is performed for 30 seconds, at a discomfort rating of 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, with a 10 second rest between.
Though quick, this routine may not be easy, and further willpower may be needed to adopt this approach.

Kirsten Burgomaster

McMaster University’s Kirsten Burgomaster, Krista Howarth, Stuart Phillips, Maureen MacDonald, SL McGee , Martin Gibala with Mark Rakobowchuk now of Brunel University validated Klika and Jordan’s proposed Seven Minutes of Discomfort.

Stuart Phillips

They noted that even a few minutes of training at an intensity approaching maximum capacity produces molecular changes within muscles comparable to those of several hours of endurance training like running or bike riding.

John Salamone

Motivational help may be available by activating nucleus accumbens dopamine, which can regulate motivation and lead to goal initiation and persistence, according to University of Connecticut’s John Salamone and Mercè Correa of Universitat Jaume I of Castellón.

Mercè Correa

They refined the common assumption that dopamine is associated with reward systems and noted that nucleus accumbens dopamine, involved in appetitive and aversive motivational processes, may provide a biochemical approach to managing motivation and task persistence.

Though it may be difficult to muster the motivation to exercise regularly, these research findings suggest that regular exercise can lead to increased coping and cognitive abilities.

-*To what extent should workplaces promote exercise to reduce stress and increase cognitive performance?

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Look for related posts on:

Vitamins and Probiotcs (Part 1)
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Music (Part 4)

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Evidence-Based Stress Management – Vitamins, Probiotics – Part 1 of 5

Innovators’s Personality Characteristics and Shibumi Principles Drive Innovation

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Øyvind Martinsen

BI Norwegian Business School’s Øyvind Martinsen identified components of creative personalities as key attributes for innovative problem solving in business organizations.

Martinsen’s study of 481 people included two groups of students in creative fields: advertising and performing artists, and a control group of lecturers and managers.

He found that creative individuals differed from the control groups in several dimensions:

Have an active imagination, “associative orientation”, an “experimental attitude”
Value originality, are comfortable rebelling against rules, standards, and systems
Demonstrate high motivation to succeed
Become absorbed in creative work
Are ambitious: Desire recognition, fame
Adapt, reimagine, rebrand, and flex to meet current demands and realities
Express anxiety, worry, volatile emotions
Demonstrate less concern, friendliness and sensitivity to others
Tend to be more critical of others

Martinsen says that a less creative individuals can increase this capacity when their work environments encourage rule-bending and free thought, so organizations can modify policies and practices to convey acceptance of exploration.

Employees are often urged to take chances by innovating solutions, but sometimes these incubation efforts may not result in a commercial success — and organizations may not “forgive” the investment of time and money in speculative efforts.

University of Washington’s Ryan Fehr with Michele Gelfand of University of Maryland suggest that organizations should establish the conditions for innovation and for accepting that experimentation may provide “lessons learned” even when efforts cannot be brought to market.

Ryan Fehr

Their research investigated “forgiving organizations” that expand the individual practice of workplace compassion and mindfulness to an institutional level.

Michele Gelfand

Fehr and Gelfand propose a “sensemaking” organizational model based on restorative justice, temperance, and compassion to cultivate the climate of fearless innovation and confident exploration in high-support organizations, which benefit from process and product breakthroughs and related financial rewards.

Matthew May

Matthew May explored a multi-faced exemplar of innovation, Shibumi, imperfectly defined as “effortless effectiveness”, simply-expressed complexity, flawed perfection.

Baldassarre Castiglione

Shibumi shares some qualities with Baldassare Castiglione’s idea of “sprezzatura,” or making “whatever one does or says seem effortless, and almost unpremeditate,” Shibumi, says May, is typically achieved through an innovation-change management sequence of:

Commitment
Preparation
Struggle
Breakthrough
Transformation

Trevanian

Film scholar Rodney William Whitaker, who wrote under the pseudonym Trevanian, opined that “Shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances,” and architect Sarah Susanka observed that “…shibumi evolves out of a process of complexity, though none of this complexity shows in the result…to meet a particular design challenge.”

Sarah Susanka

May illustrated examples of familiar Japanese management principles including Hoshin (goal alignment) and Kaizen (continuous improvement), with less familiar principles:

Kata (patterns of effective behavior)
Genchi genbutsu (observation)
Hansei (reflection).

Innovation and creative problem-solving in any field can benefit from attention to Shibumi’s seven principles:

Austerity – Less is more
“Koko” suggests restraint, sparseness, and intentional omission, and ‘Is/isn’t analysis” provides the focus and clarity to exclude elements beyond a designated scope

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint Exupery captured this principle in his view that “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

In another book, May offered 4 Ss of “elegant”, innovative, and austere solutions:

“Symmetry” to help solve problems of structure, order, and aesthetics
“Seduction” for creative engagement
“Subtraction” for problems of economy
“Sustainability” for a process or solution that is both repeatable and lasting

Simplicity
“Kanso” signals the “enoughness” of streamlined utility, based on prioritization, understatement, and order for the central purpose.
Naturalness
“Shizen” points to the paradox of intentional artlessness, or balancing nature’s randomness and patterns with intentional curation.
Subtlety
“Yugen” refers to the tension between stagnation of precision in contrast with nature’s growth.
One example is Steve Jobs building anticipation through restrained information release.
Asymmetric Imperfection
Fukinsei points to the symmetry of nature through its counterpoint: Asymmetrical and incomplete representations that encourage the viewer’s participation to “complete the incomplete.”
Gestalt researchers and artists demonstrated increased visual impact when participants co-create and collaborate in the innovation effort.
Change Routine Thinking and Actions
Datsuzoku suggests a break from routine, such as adopting free-spirited Carnival demeanor at the annual masked Fasching in German-speaking countries.
Breaking patterns enables breakthrough innovation and creative resourcefulness.
Active Stillness, Dynamic Tranquility
Seijaku is serenity in the midst of activity and provides context of datsuzoku, transcendence of conventional ideas and traditional usage, leading to surprise, astonishment, and freedom to create.
“Doing nothing” in mindfulness practice can be provide unconscious incubation for eventual creative syntheses to solve complex design issues, and increase self-awareness, focus, and attention.
Individuals who wish to become more creative even in more confining organizations have reported success by adopting mindfulness meditation based on conscious breathing.
In addition mindfulness practice can enhance resilience to accept critique in the creative process.

-*How do you establish the individual and organizational conditions for innovations?
-*How do organizations become “forgiving”?

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Oxytocin Receptor Gene’s Link to Optimism, Self-Esteem, Coping with Stress

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Shelley Taylor

Shelley E. Taylor, distinguished professor at UCLA identified the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) link to optimism, self-esteem and “mastery” — the belief that one has control over one’s own life.
These three elements are required to manage stress and depression.

Reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), she notes that oxytocin, a hormone that increases in response to stress, is associated with good social skills such as empathy and social behavior, especially under stress.

In one location on the oxytocin receptor gene, two variants occur:

• “A” (adenine) variant, associated with increased sensitivity to stress, poorer social skills, depressive symptoms and worse mental health outcomes

• “G” (guanine) variant, associated with optimism, self-esteem and mastery.

This effect was demonstrated in 326 volunteers, who completed measured by self-assessments and saliva samples for DNA analysis.
Those with two “A” nucleotides or one “A” and one “G” at this oxytocin receptor gene location, showed lower levels of optimism, self-esteem and mastery and higher levels of depressive symptoms than people with two “G” nucleotides,

Taylor notes that genes may predict behavior, but do not determine it because many environmental factors and other genes interact with oxytocin receptor gene variants in stress, coping, and emotional behaviors.

These findings suggest people who train themselves to appraise situations more optimistically, to see themselves more worthy, capable and competent, are able to improve ability to cope with stressful events.

Taylor’s book, The Tending Instinct: Women, Men, and the Biology of Relationships, outlines the importance of cultivating socially nurturing environments to mitigate genetic vulnerabilities.

She notes that “a mother’s tending can completely eliminate the potential effects of a gene; a risk for a disease can fail to materialize with nurturing, and a genetic propensity may lead to one outcome for one person and the opposite for another, based on the tending they received.”

Her most influential work demonstrated a “self-enhancement bias” in her book, Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind ,
she explained that “most people regard themselves, their circumstances, and the future as considerably more positive than is objectively likely…. These illusions are not merely characteristic of human thought; they appear actually to be adaptive, promoting rather than undermining good mental health.”

In contrast, Rick Hanson argues that a negative bias is more adaptive to survival than a positive bias.
He notes that negative stimuli produce more neural activity than do equally intense positive ones, and are perceived more easily and quickly: “The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones.”

His book, Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time, recommends meditation to tame automatic negative thoughts.

-*Where have you seen examples of “the tending instinct,” positive illusions and negative bias in the workplace?

See related posts on Hormones and Emotional Expression:
• Oxytocin, Testoterone: Oxytocin Increases Empathic Work Relationships, Workplace Trust, Generosity
• Cortisol, Testosterone: Thoughts Change Bodies, Bodies Change Minds, Roles Shape Hormones: “Faking Until It’s Real”

Twitter: @kathrynwelds
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Blog: – Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary

Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary

Consulting Organizational Psychologist | Change Consultant | Leadership+Career Master Coach | Coach Supervisor+Mentor Coach |

Tag Archives: coping

Are You Excited Yet? Anxiety as “Excitement” to Improve Performance

Rationalisation: Coping or Complacency?

Recognizing, Coping with Long-Lasting Emotions

Emotional Awareness Enables Focus, Risk-taking Even When “Stressed”

Evidence-Based Stress Management – Physical Exercise – Part 5 of 5

Evidence-Based Stress Management – Vitamins, Probiotics – Part 1 of 5

Innovators’s Personality Characteristics and Shibumi Principles Drive Innovation

Oxytocin Receptor Gene’s Link to Optimism, Self-Esteem, Coping with Stress

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