problem solving under stress

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Stress Leads to Bad Decisions. Here’s How to Avoid Them

• Ron Carucci

Step back and look for more options.

Our brains are wired to be more reactionary under stress. This can mean that in tough moments we reflexively narrow and simplify our options to all-or-nothing extremes. If we have to deliver bad news, we are either too harsh or too indirect. If we’re overloaded with work, we either overdelegate or try to do everything ourselves. If we have to make a high-stakes decision, we either go with our first instinct or we suffer from analysis paralysis. But there are no complex challenges in the world for which there are only  two  possible solutions. The minute you find yourself torn between two extremes, assume that both are limited, step back, and build a broader menu of options. That’s where you’re likely to find your optimal choice.

A senior sales executive I’ll call Daniela was frustrated. She’d been working on delegating more to her team. To her dismay, many were struggling to take on the levels of freedom she’d offered — even though they’d asked for more responsibility. Exasperated, she vented to me, “I thought delegating was supposed to free me up to do more of my own job. But every time they drop a ball I hand off, it takes me twice as long to clean up the mess as it would have taken for me to just do it myself.” Exhausted from failing at one extreme, her natural impulse was to revert back to the other.

• Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner at  Navalent , working with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change. He is the bestselling author of eight books, including To Be Honest and Rising to Power . Connect with him on Linked In at  RonCarucci , and download his free “How Honest is My Team?” assessment.

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Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Self-Affirmation Improves Problem-Solving under Stress

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Psychology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Affiliation Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, NCI, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America

Affiliation Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Affiliation Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

• J. David Creswell, 
• Janine M. Dutcher, 
• William M. P. Klein, 
• Peter R. Harris, 
• John M. Levine

• Published: May 1, 2013
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593
• Reader Comments

High levels of acute and chronic stress are known to impair problem-solving and creativity on a broad range of tasks. Despite this evidence, we know little about protective factors for mitigating the deleterious effects of stress on problem-solving. Building on previous research showing that self-affirmation can buffer stress, we tested whether an experimental manipulation of self-affirmation improves problem-solving performance in chronically stressed participants. Eighty undergraduates indicated their perceived chronic stress over the previous month and were randomly assigned to either a self-affirmation or control condition. They then completed 30 difficult remote associate problem-solving items under time pressure in front of an evaluator. Results showed that self-affirmation improved problem-solving performance in underperforming chronically stressed individuals. This research suggests a novel means for boosting problem-solving under stress and may have important implications for understanding how self-affirmation boosts academic achievement in school settings.

Citation: Creswell JD, Dutcher JM, Klein WMP, Harris PR, Levine JM (2013) Self-Affirmation Improves Problem-Solving under Stress. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62593. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593

Editor: José César Perales, Universidad de Granada, Spain

Received: September 28, 2012; Accepted: March 26, 2013; Published: May 1, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Creswell et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #924387 and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Opportunity Fund. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Acute and chronic stress have been shown to disrupt problem-solving and creativity [1] . For example, acutely stressful contexts, such as completing problem-solving tasks under negative social evaluation, have been shown to impair performance on a variety of tasks, such as anagrams and remote associate problems [2] , [3] . Feeling chronically stressed produces similar performance impairments. For example, Liston and colleagues found that participants who reported high levels of stress over the previous month demonstrated impaired attention-shifting performance compared to participants who reported low levels of stress [4] , [5] . Moreover, these stress-induced performance impairments were reversed when the high-stress participants completed the tasks after a one-month low stress period [4] . Although this body of research provides supportive evidence indicating that acute and chronic stressors can impair problem solving, little is currently known about stress management approaches for mitigating the effects of stress on problem solving.

An emerging body of research suggests that self-affirmation may be one such effective stress management approach. Self-affirmation theory posits that the goal of the self is to protect one’s self-image when threatened and that one way to do this is through affirmation of valued sources of self-worth [6] , [7] . In order to manipulate self-affirmation, experimental studies commonly have participants rank-order personal values (e.g., politics, relations with friends/family), and then participants in the self-affirmation condition are asked to respond to questions or complete a short essay on why their #1 ranked value is important (control participants complete a similar activity about why a lower ranked value might be important to someone else) [8] . As a result, participants in the self-affirmation condition have an opportunity to affirm a valued self-domain or characteristic [6] , [8] . Studies using this experimental approach have found that self-affirmation can buffer threats to the self in variety of domains [6] , with several recent studies showing that self-affirmation can buffer stress responses to laboratory stressors [9] , [10] and naturalistic academic stressors [11] . Collectively, this work suggests that if self-affirmation can reduce stress, it may also promote problem-solving performance under high stress conditions, although no previous studies have tested the effects of self-affirmation manipulations on actual problem-solving performance [12] – [16] .

In the present study, we test whether a brief self-affirmation can buffer the negative impacts of chronic stress on problem-solving. Specifically, we used a well-known measure of problem-solving and creativity (the Remote Associates Task (RAT)) [17] – [20] to test three hypotheses. First, we tested whether chronic stress is related to poorer problem-solving performance. Second, we tested whether self-affirmation improves problem-solving. Third, we tested whether these two main effects are qualified by a chronic stress × self-affirmation interaction, such that self-affirmation will improve problem-solving in chronically stressed participants, whom are likely to have impaired problem-solving, compared to participants who are low in chronic stress.

Ethics Statement

This research was approved by the Carnegie Mellon University Institutional Review Board.

Participants

Eighty students from two urban universities in Pittsburgh participated for course credit or $20. We excluded seven participants who did not follow instructions (N = 5) or who did not rate academic performance as important to them (N = 2). The sample thus consisted of 73 students (34 females; 39 males) who ranged in age from 18 to 34, with an average age of 21 (SD = 2.4). Given this broad age range and the marginally significantly association between age and overall RAT performance ( r  = −.21, p  = .07), we controlled for age in all analyses. The ethnic composition of the sample was predominantly Caucasian (55%), followed by Asian-American (16.5%), Other (12%), African-American (9.5%), mixed-race (5.5%), and Latino/Hispanic (1.5%). The sample had similar levels of chronic stress ( M =  16.6, SD  = 7.1, Range = 1–34) to normed US samples of individuals under 25 years of age (M = 16.8) [21] . Ethnicity (Caucasian vs. all others) and gender (male vs. female) did not moderate any of the primary study results (see Tables 1 and 2 ).

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.t001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.t002

Participants provided written informed consent and then completed an experiment ostensibly about intelligence and performance. Participants were informed that a trained evaluator would administer the performance task. Prior to completing the RAT and while the evaluator was ostensibly preparing to administer the test, participants were asked if they would be willing to complete a questionnaire and writing activity that was being piloted for an unrelated experiment on personal values (all agreed). Participants were randomly assigned either to the self-affirmation or control condition. In both cases, they rated 11 values (i.e., art, business, friends/family) in order of personal importance. Next, they wrote about their first ranked value and why it was important to them (self-affirmation condition) or their ninth ranked value and why it might be important to others (control condition) [12] . Following the self-affirmation writing task, as a manipulation check, participants were asked to respond to two items assessing how important the value they wrote about was, using a 6-point response scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 6 = Strongly Agree). Items were, “This value has influenced my life” and “This value is an important part of who I am” (study α = .96). Participants then completed a state mood adjective checklist assessing state positive mood (5 items: proud, content, joyful, love, and grateful; study α = .84) and state negative mood (3 items: sad, angry, scared; study α = .65) (PANAS-X; [22] , [23] ).

Participants’ heart rate and mean arterial pressure were measured at 2-minute intervals using an automatic sphygmomanometer and inflatable cuff on their left arm (Dinamap Carescape V100, General Electric Company, Finland) during three different periods: an eight-minute baseline period, followed by the RAT (about 9 minutes), and a five-minute recovery period. All readings in each period were averaged. Heart rate was included because it is a useful indirect marker for task engagement [24] , [25] , which may be affected by our self-affirmation manipulation. Mean arterial blood pressure was collected to measure cardiovascular reactivity to the laboratory challenge task.

The experimenter was blind to participant condition, and a separate RAT evaluator (also blind to condition) administered the 30-item RAT performance task. 144 RAT items have been normed for difficulty [17] , and pilot testing indicated that our undergraduate sample population can solve all easy RAT items. We thus selected 30 challenging RAT items ranging in difficulty from moderately to extremely difficult (the items are available in Table S1 ). For each RAT item, participants saw three words on a computer screen (e.g., flake, mobile, cone) and were asked to generate a fourth word (e.g., snow) that when combined with each of the three stimulus words results in a common word pair used in everyday English language (e.g., snowflake, snow mobile, snow cone). They were given 12 seconds to provide an answer verbally. The evaluator provided veridical verbal performance feedback (incorrect, correct) after each response and recorded each response. In order to create performance pressure, the evaluator provided evaluative feedback three times during the 30 RAT trials (“I need you to try harder”).

After completing the performance task, the evaluator left the room and the experimenter re-entered and indicated that the participant was to rest quietly (5 minute recovery period). Participants then completed individual difference measures, including the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale [26] to assess perceived stress over the last month (all items were summed to form a composite index of chronic stress, study α = .87). To reduce potential confounding effects, we administered these measures at the end of the experimental session because previous studies indicate that completing individual difference measures at the beginning of an experimental session may act as an affirmation manipulation (i.e., they have carry-over effects) [27] . We had no reason to expect that the experimental task would bias participants’ responses when self-reporting their chronic stress levels over the past month, and a one-way ANCOVA indicated that the self-affirmation manipulation did not affect perceived stress over the last month ( F (1, 72) = .95, p  = .22, η 2  = .01). After completing individual difference measures, participants were debriefed, compensated, and excused.

Data Analysis

All descriptive statistics, ANCOVA, and multiple regression analyses were conducted using SPSS 19.0 (IBM, Armonk, New York). All predictor variables were mean-centered prior to being entered in multiple regression equations. Our experimental manipulation of self-affirmation was dummy coded (self-affirmation = 1, control = 0). Correct responses on the RAT were summed across the 30 trials to form an overall composite RAT problem-solving performance score. As described above, age was included as a covariate in all analyses (except the preliminary chi-square analyses described below).

Preliminary Analyses

It is possible that there may have been significant differences in how participants ranked their #1 value across study conditions, which could indicate a failure of randomization. To test whether there were differences in the selected #1 ranked value between study conditions, chi-square analyses were conducted to test for condition differences (self-affirmation vs. control, low vs. high chronic stress) on which value participants’ ranked #1 ( Table 3 provides frequencies of #1 ranked values across conditions). Consistent with previous studies [28] , approximately 50% of participants selected “Relations with Friends and Family” as their #1 ranked value. Importantly, there was no main effect for either self-affirmation condition (χ 2 (8) = 6.36, p =  .61) or chronic stress level (χ 2 (8) = 6.50, p  = .59) on the #1 ranked value. Moreover, the self-affirmation × chronic stress interaction for the #1 ranked value was not significant (χ 2 (8) = 3.03, p  = .93). In sum, there was no evidence that self-affirmation condition or chronic stress level affected participants’ selection of their top-ranked value.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.t003

As expected, self-affirmation and control participants wrote about different values during the writing activity (χ 2 (10) = 33.7, p<.001; see Table 4 ), such that participants in the control condition wrote about a ninth-ranked value that was different from the first-ranked value in the self-affirmation condition. As shown in Table 4 and noted above, approximately half the self-affirmation condition participants wrote about relations with friends and family, whereas control condition participants wrote about a heterogeneous set of values. We had no reason to believe that chronic stress would influence choice of value. Consistent with this expectation, there was not a main effect for either chronic stress level (χ 2 (10) = 11.08, p  = .35) nor a self-affirmation condition × stress level interaction (χ 2 (10) = 10.6, p =  .39).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.t004

As a manipulation check, we compared the ratings that participants in different conditions made about their value writing activity immediately after completing the writing activity. A one-way ANCOVA confirmed that the self-affirmation group ( M  = 22.97, SD  = 1.38) rated the value as significantly more important than did the control group ( M =  15.13, SD  = 3.69), F (1, 71) = 142.6, p <.001, η 2  = .671, indicating success of the value-affirmation manipulation.

We also conducted an ANCOVA comparing the total number of words written in the affirmation and control essays to determine if self-affirmation participants were more engaged in the writing task and thus wrote longer essays. Although self-affirmation condition participants wrote somewhat longer essays on average ( M  = 68.79 words, SD  = 25.9) than did control condition participants ( M  = 60.34, SD  = 26.9), this difference was not statistically significant ( F (1,72) = 1.63, p  = .21). Moreover, chronic stress level was not associated with the number of words written in the self-affirmation essays ( F (1, 72) = 1.13, p  = .35). There was also no interaction between self-affirmation condition and chronic stress level on number of words written ( F (1,72) = 1.30, p  = .26). It is also worth noting that word count was not correlated with RAT problem-solving performance ( r  = .14, p  = .23), and including word count as a covariate did not appreciably change our primary problem-solving results (word count was not further pursued as a variable of interest).

Self-Affirmation, Stress, and Problem-Solving Performance

To test our primary hypotheses, we conducted a multiple regression analysis with condition (self-affirmation vs. control), perceived stress over the last month, and their interaction predicting RAT score. Consistent with hypotheses, we observed a significant main effect of chronic stress on RAT performance ( β  = −.45, t (72) = −2.75, p  = .008), such that participants with higher stress in the last month had lower problem-solving performance. Moreover, we observed a significant main effect for self-affirmation condition, ( β  = .31, t (72) = 2.88, p  = .005), such that affirmed participants performed significantly better on the RAT task than control participants ( Figure 1 ). Consistent with our self-affirmation stress buffering hypothesis, these main effects were qualified by a significant chronic stress × self-affirmation interaction on RAT problem-solving performance ( β  = .35, t (72) = 2.09, p  = .041). As shown in Figure 1 , self-affirmation (compared to the control condition) improved the RAT problem solving performance of underperforming high chronic stress individuals, but had a minimal impact on the performance of participants low in chronic stress. Moreover, as depicted in Figure 1 , this stress buffering effect of self-affirmation improved the problem-solving performance of high stress individuals to a level comparable to individuals low in stress.

Low and high stress groups (as measured by the Perceived Stress Scale) were determined by median split for visual presentation. Error bars reflect standard errors of the mean.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.g001

Testing the Positive Affect and Task Engagement Accounts of Problem-Solving

Previous studies indicate that positive affect boosts problem-solving performance [29] , [30] , so we tested the possibility that the self-affirmation activity was a positive affect induction, and that positive affect engendered by self-affirmation explained the problem-solving effects. Consistent with other reports [28] , we found that the self-affirmation group had higher state positive affect compared to the control group (as determined by multiple regression controlling for age: β = . 51, t (69) = 4.79, p <.001.) We also tested negative affect using the same approach, but there was not a significant main effect for self-affirmation condition ( β  = −.12, t (71) = −1.06, p  = .29) or a stress × self-affirmation interaction ( β  = −.02, t (71) = −.90, p  = .37) on state negative affect. However, there was not a self-affirmation × chronic stress interaction on positive affect ( β  = .19, t (69) = 1.19, p  = .24). Given that self-affirmation increased state positive affect, we conducted mediation analyses (following procedure described in [31] ) testing whether state positive affect mediated the impact of self-affirmation on problem-solving. In the first step of the mediation analysis, self-affirmation increased positive affect (as described above). The second step in testing mediation consists of evaluating whether the mediating variable (positive affect) predicts the outcome variable (problem-solving performance) when entered simultaneously with the predictor variable (self-affirmation condition). This second analysis revealed that positive affect was not a significant predictor of RAT performance when it was entered as a simultaneous predictor variable with the self-affirmation condition variable ( β  = −.07, t (71) = −.54, p  = .59). Thus we did not find supporting evidence for positive affect as a mediator for the self-affirmation main effect or the chronic stress × self-affirmation interaction on problem-solving performance.

As noted earlier, previous research suggests that heart rate is a useful indirect marker for task engagement [24] , [25] . To test whether there was differential task engagement in the self-affirmation and control conditions using this physiological measure, we conducted a repeated measures ANCOVA to assess change in heart rate over time between conditions (In order to run a parallel ANCOVA analyses as our primary analysis, the heart rate and mean arterial pressure analyses were run with the chronic stress variable entered as a two-level between subjects variable (low vs. high stress), as determined by median split). Although participants showed an overall significant heart rate increase from baseline ( M  = 68.50, SE  = 1.03) to the RAT problem solving period ( M  = 76.44, SE  = 1.31) ( paired-samples t (69) = −9.26, p  = <.001), there were no significant main effect or interactive effects of conditions on heart rate change. Specifically, we did not observe a significant main effect for self-affirmation condition ( F (1, 67) = .36 p  = .55, η 2  = .01) or chronic stress ( F (1,66) = .09, p  = .77, η 2  = .001). Notably, we also did not observe a significant self-affirmation condition × time interaction ( F (2, 67) = .43 p  = .65, η 2  = .01) or a condition × time × chronic stress interaction ( F (2, 67) = 1.15 p  = .32, η 2  = .03) ( Figure 2 ), indicating that there were no differential effects of self-affirmation (or the self-affirmation × chronic stress interaction) on heart rate. Collectively, these findings do not provide support for a differential task engagement explanation of our performance findings. Instead, our data indicate that participants across conditions were similarly engaged in the problem-solving task.

Panel A depicts the results for participants low in chronic stress, and Panel B depicts the results for participants high in chronic stress, as determined by median split. Error bars reflect standard errors of the mean.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.g002

We also assessed the impact of our self-affirmation manipulation on mean arterial blood pressure responses during the RAT problem-solving period. Like heart rate, participants showed an overall significant mean arterial pressure increase from baseline ( M  = 79.71, SE  = .86) to the RAT problem solving period ( M  = 89.05, SE  = 1.08) ( paired-samples t (69) = −12.12, p <.001), but we did not observe significant main effects of self-affirmation ( F (1,67) = 2.21, p  = .14, η 2  = .03) or chronic stress ( F (1,66) = .32, p  = .57, η 2  = .01). Similarly, the self-affirmation condition × time ( F (2, 64) = .13, p  = .88, η 2  = .004) and condition × time × chronic stress ( F (2, 64) = 1.53 p  = .23, η 2  = .05) interactions were not significant ( Figure 3 ). These heart rate and mean arterial blood pressure results are in accord with our previous work showing that self-affirmation does not appreciably alter heart rate or blood pressure responses to acute stress-challenge tasks [9] . Importantly, the changes in heart rate and blood pressure reaffirm that the RAT task was stressful for participants.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.g003

The present study provides the first evidence that self-affirmation can protect against the deleterious effects of stress on problem-solving performance. Specifically, we show that chronically stressed individuals have impaired problem-solving performance and that self-affirmation can boost problem-solving performance under pressure. Notably, these effects were qualified by a significant chronic stress by self-affirmation interaction, such that self-affirmation improved problem-solving performance in underperforming chronically stressed individuals. These findings have important implications for self-affirmation research and educational interventions. First, although we have shown in several studies that self-affirmation can reduce acute stress experiences [9] – [11] , previous research has not tested whether self-affirmation can be protective in the context of chronic (or ongoing) stressors. Moreover, until now it has been unclear whether the stress buffering benefits of self-affirmation translate into improved performance outcomes on actual problem solving tasks. Our present study suggests that a brief self-affirmation activity is sufficient to buffer the negative effects of chronic stress on task performance and can improve the ability to problem solve in a flexible manner during high stress periods [3] , [32] . It is important to note that the task used in the present study (RAT) is a common measure of creativity performance and insight [18] , [33] , and hence our study suggests that self-affirmation may increase creativity and insight in stressed individuals [16] , [34] .

Second, our study suggests that self-affirmation may be effective at boosting performance in academic tasks requiring associative processing and creativity, particularly for students who experience stress on such tasks [34] . Thus, our findings identify a potential mechanism by which a self-affirmation intervention at the beginning of a school term can improve at-risk students’ academic achievement, reducing achievement disparities between African Americans and European Americans and between women and men in science [12] – [15] .

Finally, two limitations of our study should be mentioned. It is possible that the stress buffering effects of self-affirmation on problem-solving performance that we obtained are specific to evaluative performance settings, since all of our participants completed difficult RAT items under time pressure in front of a critical evaluator. (We note that the problem-solving task we used produced significant cardiovascular stress reactivity (see Figures 2 & 3 ), comparable to other well-known psychosocial stress-challenge tasks [35] .) Future studies should therefore experimentally test whether social evaluation is a necessary condition for self-affirmation problem-solving effects. Another limitation of our study is that we measured chronic stress using a self-report measure, and this measure was collected at the end of our study session (although there were no experimental (self-affirmation manipulation) effects on chronic stress scores). We elected to use this procedure given that completing individual difference measures may have carry-over effects if completed immediately prior to self-affirmation activities [27] . Future studies using other measures for assessing chronic stress (e.g., selecting chronically stressed vs. matched control groups) [4] would therefore be useful.

The present research contributes to a broader effort at understanding how stress management approaches can facilitate problem-solving performance under stress. Despite many studies showing that acute and chronic stressors can impair problem-solving [1] , [2] , [4] , we know little about stress management and coping approaches for buffering stress during problem-solving [36] . Our work suggests that self-affirmation may be a relatively easy-to-use strategy for mitigating stress and improving problem-solving performance in evaluative settings. It will be important for future studies to consider the mechanisms linking self-affirmation with improved problem solving. We show here that our self-affirmation effects are unlikely to be explained by changes in positive affect or task engagement. The fact that we did not see any differential effects of self-affirmation on a physiological measure of task engagement (heart rate) also suggests that these effects are not driven by changes in persistence or motivation [32] . A more likely possibility, to be tested by future research, is that self-affirmation facilitates a more open and flexible attentional stance (e.g., [16] ), which increases working memory availability [37] , [38] for problem-solving in evaluative contexts.

Conclusions

The present study builds on previous research showing that self-affirmation has stress protective effects in performance settings [9] , [12] , [13] , [15] , providing an initial indication that self-affirmation can buffer the effects of chronic stress on actual problem-solving in performance settings.

Supporting Information

Remote Associate items used in the present study.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062593.s001

Acknowledgments

This dataset is available upon request ( [email protected] ).

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JDC JMD WMPK PRH JML. Performed the experiments: JMD. Analyzed the data: JDC JMD. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JDC. Wrote the paper: JDC JMD WMPK PRH JML.

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How to Cope With Stress: 10+ Strategies and Mechanisms

If so, you might be stressed.

Stress is an inevitable part of life, affecting individuals in different ways. Some people thrive under stress, whereas others struggle. Our thresholds for how much stress we can endure differ from one person to the next.

Learning how to cope with stress is essential to ensuring that individuals maintain their physical and mental health. It is improbable to have a life completely free of stress, so we must learn how to cope.

In this post, we explore how to cope with stress using stress coping techniques. We will start with the psychological theories about stress and, from there, look at several methods, informal and formal, that can be used. Our goal is that readers should have a solid understanding of stress-management techniques that can be easily implemented.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercises (PDF) for free . These science-based exercises will equip you and your clients with tools to better manage stress and find a healthier balance in your life.

This Article Contains

How to cope with stress according to psychology, healthy coping strategies and mechanisms: a list, 6+ techniques your clients can try, 5 activities, prompts, and worksheets, stress-management skills for work stress, 3 questionnaires, tests, and inventories, resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

There are various psychological theories about coping with stress, and it is essential to understand these theories to manage stress effectively.

4 Theories about coping with stress

One of the most popular and widely accepted theories is the transactional model of stress and coping, developed by Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman (1984).

According to this model, stress results from an individual’s assessment of the stressor, its threat, and whether they have the necessary cognitive and behavioral resources to manage the stressor.

Based on this assessment, our coping mechanisms and psychological responses to stress are triggered. The model suggests that coping strategies can be either problem focused or emotion focused.

Problem-focused coping involves actively addressing the stressor, while emotion-focused coping involves managing the emotions associated with the stressor.

The transactional model of stress was expanded upon into the workplace, where it’s known as the job demand–control theory and the job demand–control–support theory (for a review, see Häusser et al., 2010; Goh et al., 2010).

In this theory, two dimensions influence the experience of stress: workload/job demands and the degree of control employees have over work tasks. The combination of high demand and low control increases the likelihood of high stress. Social support within the office has protective properties that moderate the relationship between demand and control.

The protective qualities of social support were recognized in the social support theory, another theory about coping with stress (Cohen & Wills, 1985). In this theory, social support is crucial for managing anxiety, because it helps ease feelings of anxiety and helps develop solutions to stressful environments. Social support is not limited to only immediate family and friends but includes colleagues and health care professionals.

The conservation of resources Theory (COR; Hobfoll, 1989) is another stress coping theory. This theory developed from the starting point that people feel stressed when they do not think they have the necessary resources to combat stress. However, in COR, additional emphasis is placed on the objective resources that are also available. These resources can be tangible (e.g., money, a house) or intangible (e.g., our relationships, self-worth), and individuals experience stress when their resources are threatened, depleted, or unattainable.

This theory is primarily used to explain workplace stress , and some researchers prefer it over the transactional model of stress because it:

• Is more practical and realistic
• Places less responsibility on the individual who experiences the stressor to change their mindset to combat stress
• Has predictive qualities (Hobfoll et al., 2018)

Why is stress management important?

Chronic stress can adversely affect an individual’s wellbeing and lead to mental health disorders like anxiety and depression (Hammen, 2005).

Therefore, developing good coping strategies has multiple beneficial outcomes (Cohen, 2004), including:

• Reducing the negative impact of stress
• Improving an individual’s overall quality of life by enhancing resilience
• Improving their social support network, allowing them to seek help and support from friends and family during stressful times

Here we provide a concise list of methods that can be used to cope with stress.

• Healthy coping strategies include exercise, relaxation techniques, social support, and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies (CBT). Exercise has been shown to have numerous health benefits, including stress reduction, improved mood, and enhanced cognitive function (Sui et al., 2019).
• Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, and yoga have also been shown to reduce stress and improve mental health outcomes (Pascoe et al., 2017).
• Social support, such as emotional and practical support from family and friends, can help individuals cope with stress (Cohen & Wills, 1985).
• CBT helps individuals recognize and change negative thought patterns and behaviors, improving mental health outcomes (Hofmann et al., 2012).
• Additional strategies that can improve mental and physical health are getting enough sleep, eating healthily, and avoiding alcohol (or consuming it in moderation). They do not impact stress directly, but they provide the scaffolding so individuals are better positioned to cope with stressful experiences effectively.

Besides these healthy coping strategies, there are several psychological techniques or mechanisms that individuals can use to manage stress.

• One mechanism is problem-focused coping, which involves addressing the stressor directly through problem-solving strategies (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
• Emotion-focused coping involves managing the emotional response to stress through strategies such as positive reappraisal or acceptance (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
• Meaning-focused coping involves finding meaning or purpose in the stressor or the experience of coping with it (Park, 2010).

These psychological techniques can be used alongside healthy coping strategies to manage stress more effectively and maintain overall wellbeing.

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Stress can have a significant impact on both our physical and mental wellbeing. Fortunately, there are several psychological techniques and physiological strategies that can alleviate stress.

• One such technique is mindfulness-based stress reduction ( MBSR ). MBSR has decreased perceived stress, anxiety, and depression in individuals who practice it regularly (Carmody & Baer, 2009).
• Similarly, practicing mindfulness meditation has been found to reduce stress levels and improve wellbeing (Hoge et al., 2013). Mindfulness exercises can include simple techniques, such as paying attention to one’s breath or body sensations, or more structured practices, such as body scans or mindful eating .
• Another technique is CBT , which helps individuals identify and challenge negative thoughts and beliefs contributing to stress (Beck, 2011).
• Additionally, relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation and deep- breathing exercises have been shown to reduce stress (Hennefeld & Battle, 2019).
• Another technique is visualization, which involves imagining a calm, peaceful place or scenario to reduce stress and promote relaxation (Chafin & Ollendick, 2001).

Move your body to improve your mood

Physical exercise and activity have also reduced stress levels and improved mood and overall wellbeing (Craft & Perna, 2004). Physical exercise reduces stress by releasing endorphins, improving mood, combating depression , and improving physical health (Belvederi Murri et al., 2019).

One simple yet effective activity is to take a walk in nature. A study conducted by Bratman et al. (2015) found that taking a 90-minute walk in a natural environment reduced neural activity in the sub-genual prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with rumination and negative thought patterns.

Although exercise can be completed alone, consider doing it with friends or family or joining an exercise group or club. This way, you get double the benefits: exercise’s mood-boosting effects plus social support’s protective benefits.

Consider formal social support groups

Finally, joining a support group or taking part in group therapy can also help build a sense of community and reduce feelings of isolation.

Cohen et al. (2015) found that individuals who received social support had lower levels of stress hormones in response to stressors than those who did not receive social support.

The ABC sheet

One commonly used activity is the ABC sheet , which is based on CBT and helps patients understand the relationship between their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

The name is an initialism:

• Antecedent is the event or stimulus that activates thoughts.
• Belief represents the perception or evaluation of that event.
• Consequence is the emotional or behavioral reaction that follows.

With this sheet, patients learn to identify irrational thoughts, negative beliefs, and consequences.

Once patients learn how to recognize these beliefs and behaviors, they can also learn how to challenge them, resulting in more favorable emotional and behavioral outcomes.

The Core Values Worksheet

Another worksheet is the Core Values Worksheet . With this worksheet, the underlying premise is that if we behave in a way that is incongruent with our core values, then we will experience stress.

Therefore, to reduce stress, we must identify our core values and how to align our behaviors to achieve, preserve, and satisfy them. These behaviors should be incorporated into our daily lives, not just reserved for big, life-changing decisions.

In this worksheet, the client will list their top values and then identify specific actions aligned with them. In addition to helping clients identify primary values, the tool can also help them identify incongruous behaviors that can lead to stress.

Journal prompts

Journaling is a valuable method for reducing stress and identifying patterns of behaviors and thoughts. One of the most significant advantages of journaling is that it is easy to implement and cost effective. All you need is a pencil and a notebook.

Several journal prompts can be used for coping with stress. In fact, we suggest having a look at our gratitude journal article for ideas. However, to whet your appetite, here is a short list to start with:

• Gratitude journaling: Write about three things you are grateful for each day to increase positive emotions.
• Positive self-talk: Jot down some positive affirmations or statements about yourself. This can help combat negative self-talk and increase self-esteem.
• Reflection on achievements: Write about a recent accomplishment to improve your self-worth.

For most adults, work is a source of significant stress. Unfortunately, it is a common occurrence that can lead to substantial physical and mental health issues if not adequately managed.

Developing stress-management techniques for work will improve not only wellbeing, but also productivity. Stress-management strategies for work include time management, physical activity, and mindfulness meditation.

Effective time management is a critical stress-management skill, and it involves organizing and prioritizing tasks to optimize productivity and reduce stress. For example, employees who manage their time efficiently are less likely to experience work stress (Frost & Stimpson, 2020).

To do this, individuals should set realistic goals and establish a schedule that allows them to accomplish their tasks without feeling overwhelmed. Other methods within employees’ control are to avoid procrastination and work without distraction.

For example, do not accept all tasks or requests that come your way, learn to say no or delegate, do the most difficult task first, and use a time-management system. One example of an effective time-management system is the Pomodoro technique , where you work for 25 minutes, take a five-minute break, and then after three cycles, take a longer break.

If employees do not determine their deadlines or tasks, which can be unrealistic or untenable, they should discuss these challenges with their managers or team leaders.

Employers can also significantly reduce work stress by implementing policies promoting a healthy work–life balance and providing stress-management training and support resources.

Physical activity is another critical stress-management skill that can help employees cope with work stress. Regular physical activity has been shown to reduce stress, improve mood, and increase energy levels by reducing stress hormones in the body (i.e., cortisol and adrenaline) and promoting the release of endorphins, which are natural mood enhancers (Salmon, 2018).

Physical activity can also improve cognitive function and help individuals make better decisions, which can reduce work stress (Stults-Kolehmainen & Sinha, 2014).

Other simple physical techniques that may help combat work stress include getting enough sleep, eating healthily and regularly, and avoiding alcohol (or consuming it in moderation).

Mindfulness exercises, such as mindfulness meditation, may also protect against work stress. Mindfulness meditation is a stress-management technique focusing on the present moment without judgment.

This technique helps individuals reduce stress by promoting relaxation, improving cognitive function (Schmidt et al., 2019), and reducing feelings of anxiety even in the workplace (Biegel et al., 2009). Mindfulness meditation can be easily performed in the office or a quiet workplace.

These tools have good psychometric properties (i.e., internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and validity) and are often used in peer-reviewed research.

Perceived Stress Scale

The first questionnaire is the Perceived Stress Scale, a 10-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure an individual’s subjective perception of stress (Cohen et al., 1983).

Initially, it was designed as a generic tool to measure perceived stress in a smoking cessation study. The original version contained 14 items and can be found in the original paper.

It assesses how individuals perceive their life as unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded. The Perceived Stress Scale , with scoring instructions, can be accessed via the link.

State–Trait Anxiety Inventory

A second, more general measure of anxiety and stress is the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger et al., 1983).

Originally, it was developed as two separate tools, each containing 20 questions; however, these are often administered together. This inventory is widely used, easy to administer, and freely available.

It is a 40-item self-report questionnaire that measures two types of anxiety: state and trait anxiety. State anxiety is the temporary emotional state characterized by subjective feelings of tension, apprehension, and nervousness. For example, when presented with an urgent deadline, we might feel acute but short-lived feelings of stress and worry.

In contrast, trait anxiety is a stable personality trait characterized by a tendency to experience anxiety across various situations. For example, some people tend to have higher anxiety in general that is not limited to a specific event.

Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ)

For professionals who work in industrial and organizational psychology, we recommend the JCQ (Karasek et al.,1998).

This is a 49-item self-report questionnaire that measures job stress in terms of its psychological demands, decision authority, skill discretion, and social support. Initially, it was designed for research on the relationship between job stress and cardiovascular disease.

A study by Kivimäki et al. (2012) found that high job strain (high psychological demands combined with low decision authority and low social support) was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease. The JCQ is in the manuscript’s appendix published by Karasek et al. (1998).

17 Exercises To Reduce Stress & Burnout

Help your clients prevent burnout, handle stressors, and achieve a healthy, sustainable work-life balance with these 17 Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercises [PDF].

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

For readers interested in journaling techniques and prompts, we suggest the following articles:

• Journaling for Mindfulness
• Journal prompts to improve self-esteem

For readers who want to read more about mindfulness meditation, especially in the workplace. this post is a good starting point and is quite exhaustive:

• Mindfulness at Work

In addition to our blog posts and free worksheets, we’d also like to share these three tools specifically related to stress and burnout. The Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercise Pack includes the following useful worksheets:

• Energy Management Audit
• The Stress-Related Growth Scale
• Strengthening the Work–Private Life Barrier

The worksheets are easy to administer and appropriate for clients experiencing stress in different domains of their lives. Two of these tools are designed for assessment and can help identify energy levels, the most effective ways to recharge, and how clients approach and reframe life events. The third tool is an exercise to help develop work–life boundaries.

Looking for even more tools? If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others manage stress without spending hours on research and session prep, check out this collection of 17 validated stress-management tools for practitioners . Use them to help others cope with stress and create more balance in their lives.

Stress is a common experience that can have very serious negative consequences if left unmanaged. However, learning how to cope with stress is vital and will positively impact different spheres of life.

A large amount of stress is due to work demands. Finding a coping solution that works for you, especially one that can be incorporated into the work environment, is a great way to improve your mental health.

We encourage you to try these coping techniques to find the optimal one that will help you manage your stress levels.

Are there any stress coping methods you would recommend personally or that you have found highly effective in your practice? Please share them with us in the comments.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercises (PDF) for free .

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What Is Problem-Solving Therapy?

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Daniel B. Block, MD, is an award-winning, board-certified psychiatrist who operates a private practice in Pennsylvania.

Verywell / Madelyn Goodnight

Problem-Solving Therapy Techniques

How effective is problem-solving therapy, things to consider, how to get started.

Problem-solving therapy is a brief intervention that provides people with the tools they need to identify and solve problems that arise from big and small life stressors. It aims to improve your overall quality of life and reduce the negative impact of psychological and physical illness.

Problem-solving therapy can be used to treat depression , among other conditions. It can be administered by a doctor or mental health professional and may be combined with other treatment approaches.

At a Glance

Problem-solving therapy is a short-term treatment used to help people who are experiencing depression, stress, PTSD, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and other mental health problems develop the tools they need to deal with challenges. This approach teaches people to identify problems, generate solutions, and implement those solutions. Let's take a closer look at how problem-solving therapy can help people be more resilient and adaptive in the face of stress.

Problem-solving therapy is based on a model that takes into account the importance of real-life problem-solving. In other words, the key to managing the impact of stressful life events is to know how to address issues as they arise. Problem-solving therapy is very practical in its approach and is only concerned with the present, rather than delving into your past.

This form of therapy can take place one-on-one or in a group format and may be offered in person or online via telehealth . Sessions can be anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours long. 

Key Components

There are two major components that make up the problem-solving therapy framework:

• Applying a positive problem-solving orientation to your life
• Using problem-solving skills

A positive problem-solving orientation means viewing things in an optimistic light, embracing self-efficacy , and accepting the idea that problems are a normal part of life. Problem-solving skills are behaviors that you can rely on to help you navigate conflict, even during times of stress. This includes skills like:

• Knowing how to identify a problem
• Defining the problem in a helpful way
• Trying to understand the problem more deeply
• Setting goals related to the problem
• Generating alternative, creative solutions to the problem
• Choosing the best course of action
• Implementing the choice you have made
• Evaluating the outcome to determine next steps

Problem-solving therapy is all about training you to become adaptive in your life so that you will start to see problems as challenges to be solved instead of insurmountable obstacles. It also means that you will recognize the action that is required to engage in effective problem-solving techniques.

Planful Problem-Solving

One problem-solving technique, called planful problem-solving, involves following a series of steps to fix issues in a healthy, constructive way:

• Problem definition and formulation : This step involves identifying the real-life problem that needs to be solved and formulating it in a way that allows you to generate potential solutions.
• Generation of alternative solutions : This stage involves coming up with various potential solutions to the problem at hand. The goal in this step is to brainstorm options to creatively address the life stressor in ways that you may not have previously considered.
• Decision-making strategies : This stage involves discussing different strategies for making decisions as well as identifying obstacles that may get in the way of solving the problem at hand.
• Solution implementation and verification : This stage involves implementing a chosen solution and then verifying whether it was effective in addressing the problem.

Other Techniques

Other techniques your therapist may go over include:

• Problem-solving multitasking , which helps you learn to think clearly and solve problems effectively even during times of stress
• Stop, slow down, think, and act (SSTA) , which is meant to encourage you to become more emotionally mindful when faced with conflict
• Healthy thinking and imagery , which teaches you how to embrace more positive self-talk while problem-solving

What Problem-Solving Therapy Can Help With

Problem-solving therapy addresses life stress issues and focuses on helping you find solutions to concrete issues. This approach can be applied to problems associated with various psychological and physiological symptoms.

Mental Health Issues

Problem-solving therapy may help address mental health issues, like:

• Chronic stress due to accumulating minor issues
• Complications associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI)
• Emotional distress
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Problems associated with a chronic disease like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes
• Self-harm and feelings of hopelessness
• Substance use
• Suicidal ideation

Specific Life Challenges

This form of therapy is also helpful for dealing with specific life problems, such as:

• Death of a loved one
• Dissatisfaction at work
• Everyday life stressors
• Family problems
• Financial difficulties
• Relationship conflicts

Your doctor or mental healthcare professional will be able to advise whether problem-solving therapy could be helpful for your particular issue. In general, if you are struggling with specific, concrete problems that you are having trouble finding solutions for, problem-solving therapy could be helpful for you.

Benefits of Problem-Solving Therapy

The skills learned in problem-solving therapy can be helpful for managing all areas of your life. These can include:

• Being able to identify which stressors trigger your negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger)
• Confidence that you can handle problems that you face
• Having a systematic approach on how to deal with life's problems
• Having a toolbox of strategies to solve the issues you face
• Increased confidence to find creative solutions
• Knowing how to identify which barriers will impede your progress
• Knowing how to manage emotions when they arise
• Reduced avoidance and increased action-taking
• The ability to accept life problems that can't be solved
• The ability to make effective decisions
• The development of patience (realizing that not all problems have a "quick fix")

Problem-solving therapy can help people feel more empowered to deal with the problems they face in their lives. Rather than feeling overwhelmed when stressors begin to take a toll, this therapy introduces new coping skills that can boost self-efficacy and resilience .

Other Types of Therapy

Other similar types of therapy include cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) . While these therapies work to change thinking and behaviors, they work a bit differently. Both CBT and SFBT are less structured than problem-solving therapy and may focus on broader issues. CBT focuses on identifying and changing maladaptive thoughts, and SFBT works to help people look for solutions and build self-efficacy based on strengths.

This form of therapy was initially developed to help people combat stress through effective problem-solving, and it was later adapted to address clinical depression specifically. Today, much of the research on problem-solving therapy deals with its effectiveness in treating depression.

Problem-solving therapy has been shown to help depression in: 

• Older adults
• People coping with serious illnesses like cancer

Problem-solving therapy also appears to be effective as a brief treatment for depression, offering benefits in as little as six to eight sessions with a therapist or another healthcare professional. This may make it a good option for someone unable to commit to a lengthier treatment for depression.

Problem-solving therapy is not a good fit for everyone. It may not be effective at addressing issues that don't have clear solutions, like seeking meaning or purpose in life. Problem-solving therapy is also intended to treat specific problems, not general habits or thought patterns .

In general, it's also important to remember that problem-solving therapy is not a primary treatment for mental disorders. If you are living with the symptoms of a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia , you may need additional treatment with evidence-based approaches for your particular concern.

Problem-solving therapy is best aimed at someone who has a mental or physical issue that is being treated separately, but who also has life issues that go along with that problem that has yet to be addressed.

For example, it could help if you can't clean your house or pay your bills because of your depression, or if a cancer diagnosis is interfering with your quality of life.

Your doctor may be able to recommend therapists in your area who utilize this approach, or they may offer it themselves as part of their practice. You can also search for a problem-solving therapist with help from the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Society of Clinical Psychology .

If receiving problem-solving therapy from a doctor or mental healthcare professional is not an option for you, you could also consider implementing it as a self-help strategy using a workbook designed to help you learn problem-solving skills on your own.

During your first session, your therapist may spend some time explaining their process and approach. They may ask you to identify the problem you’re currently facing, and they’ll likely discuss your goals for therapy .

Keep In Mind

Problem-solving therapy may be a short-term intervention that's focused on solving a specific issue in your life. If you need further help with something more pervasive, it can also become a longer-term treatment option.

Get Help Now

We've tried, tested, and written unbiased reviews of the best online therapy programs including Talkspace, BetterHelp, and ReGain. Find out which option is the best for you.

Shang P, Cao X, You S, Feng X, Li N, Jia Y. Problem-solving therapy for major depressive disorders in older adults: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials .  Aging Clin Exp Res . 2021;33(6):1465-1475. doi:10.1007/s40520-020-01672-3

Cuijpers P, Wit L de, Kleiboer A, Karyotaki E, Ebert DD. Problem-solving therapy for adult depression: An updated meta-analysis . Eur Psychiatry . 2018;48(1):27-37. doi:10.1016/j.eurpsy.2017.11.006

Nezu AM, Nezu CM, D'Zurilla TJ. Problem-Solving Therapy: A Treatment Manual . New York; 2013. doi:10.1891/9780826109415.0001

Owens D, Wright-Hughes A, Graham L, et al. Problem-solving therapy rather than treatment as usual for adults after self-harm: a pragmatic, feasibility, randomised controlled trial (the MIDSHIPS trial) .  Pilot Feasibility Stud . 2020;6:119. doi:10.1186/s40814-020-00668-0

Sorsdahl K, Stein DJ, Corrigall J, et al. The efficacy of a blended motivational interviewing and problem solving therapy intervention to reduce substance use among patients presenting for emergency services in South Africa: A randomized controlled trial . Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy . 2015;10(1):46. doi:doi.org/10.1186/s13011-015-0042-1

Margolis SA, Osborne P, Gonzalez JS. Problem solving . In: Gellman MD, ed. Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine . Springer International Publishing; 2020:1745-1747. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39903-0_208

Kirkham JG, Choi N, Seitz DP. Meta-analysis of problem solving therapy for the treatment of major depressive disorder in older adults . Int J Geriatr Psychiatry . 2016;31(5):526-535. doi:10.1002/gps.4358

Garand L, Rinaldo DE, Alberth MM, et al. Effects of problem solving therapy on mental health outcomes in family caregivers of persons with a new diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or early dementia: A randomized controlled trial . Am J Geriatr Psychiatry . 2014;22(8):771-781. doi:10.1016/j.jagp.2013.07.007

Noyes K, Zapf AL, Depner RM, et al. Problem-solving skills training in adult cancer survivors: Bright IDEAS-AC pilot study .  Cancer Treat Res Commun . 2022;31:100552. doi:10.1016/j.ctarc.2022.100552

Albert SM, King J, Anderson S, et al. Depression agency-based collaborative: effect of problem-solving therapy on risk of common mental disorders in older adults with home care needs . The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry . 2019;27(6):619-624. doi:10.1016/j.jagp.2019.01.002

By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Press Release: Carnegie Mellon Research Shows Self-Affirmation Improves Problem-Solving Under Stress

Published in PLOS ONE , new research from Carnegie Mellon University provides the first evidence that self-affirmation can protect against the damaging effects of stress on problem-solving performance. Understanding that self-affirmation — the process of identifying and focusing on one's most important values - boosts stressed individuals' problem-solving abilities will help guide future research and the development of educational interventions.

"An emerging set of published studies suggest that a brief self-affirmation activity at the beginning of a school term can boost academic grade-point averages in underperforming kids at the end of the semester. This new work suggests a mechanism for these studies, showing self-affirmation effects on actual problem-solving performance under pressure," said J. David Creswell , assistant professor of psychology in CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Because previous research indicated that self-affirmation may be an effective stress management approach, Creswell and his research team had college students rank-order a set of values (e.g., art, business, family and friends) in terms of their personal importance, and indicate their levels of chronic stress. Participants randomly assigned to a self-affirmation condition were asked to write a couple of sentences about why their number one ranked value was important (a standard self-affirmation exercise). All participants then had to complete a challenging problem-solving task under time pressure, which required creativity in order to generate correct solutions.

The results showed that participants who were under high levels of chronic stress during the past month had impaired problem-solving performance. In fact, they solved about 50 percent fewer problems in the task. But notably, this effect was qualified by whether participants had an opportunity to first complete the self-affirmation activity. Specifically, a brief self-affirmation was effective in eliminating the deleterious effects of chronic stress on problem-solving performance, such that chronically stressed self-affirmed participants performed under pressure at the same level as participants with low chronic stress levels.

"People under high stress can foster better problem-solving simply by taking a moment beforehand to think about something that is important to them," Creswell said. "It's an easy-to-use and portable strategy you can roll out before you enter that high pressure performance situation."

In addition to Creswell, the research team consisted of Janine M. Dutcher , who participated as a Carnegie Mellon undergraduate student and is now at UCLA; William M. P. Klein of the National Cancer Institute; Peter R. Harris of the University of Sheffield; and John M. Levine of the University of Pittsburgh.

The National Science Foundation and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Opportunity Fund supported this research.

For more information, visit http://www.psy.cmu.edu/people/creswell.html .

### J. David Creswell, pictured above, says, "People under high stress can foster better problem-solving simply by taking a moment beforehand to think about something that is important to them. It's an easy-to-use and portable strategy you can roll out before you enter that high pressure performance situation."

How We Process Under Pressure: Stress, Perception and Cognition

Our psychology can change enormously in the forensic realm and elsewhere..

Posted December 17, 2021 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods

• What Is Stress?
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• Modern research shows us what to expect, psychologically, when we experience extreme stress, such as that typical of many crime situations.
• Heart rate is a key indicator of high stress but even very fit persons can experience very high heart rates under stress.
• These factors can change our psychology enormously. Understanding these changes is essential in the forensic realm.

Forensic psychology frequently deals with nasty situations. The enormous stress of crime scene events can literally change the perceptual and cognitive processes of victims, suspects, and law enforcement officers alike, frequently with major consequences for criminal justice proceedings (e.g., Sharps, 2022).

We dealt with some of these issues in a previous Forensic View (May 22, 2020), showing how high stress may reduce the blood-borne resources available to the prefrontal cortex, among other brain areas, with a corresponding reduction in specific aspects of human perception and cognition . But how stressed do we have to be for these factors to emerge?

Stress is not all bad. Healthy readers of this post probably have resting heart rates, in terms of beats per minute, somewhere in the 70’s or perhaps 80’s, with a few healthy people having heart rates somewhat higher or lower. However, that’s not enough of a heart rate to cope with the cardiovascular needs of forensically-relevant tactical situations. To increase our physical strength, speed, and endurance, our cardiovascular systems are primed to supply us with the blood-borne resources needed to cope with physical emergencies. Under these circumstances, we enter the fight-or-flight state regulated by the HPA Axis (the activity of the Hypothalamus, Pituitary, and Adrenal systems). Chronic fight-or-flight functioning can produce major physical and psychological problems, as detailed elsewhere (e.g., Sharps, 2022; Forensic View , 5/22/20). But over the short term, the enhanced blood flow provided by HPA activity (one of the major chemical products of which is adrenaline) gives us strength, speed, and endurance far beyond our everyday abilities.

However, to attain these heightened physical powers, we must raise our heart rates to the optimal “zone” for tactical, high-stress activity. This lies between 115 and 135 beats per minute according to most authorities.

In this heart rate “zone,” we are stronger and faster than normal; but there is a downside. As our hearts beat faster, we begin to lose our fine motor coordination. If you’ve ever seen an angry fisherman, with a correspondingly raised heart rate, attempting to untangle a knotted fishing line while inadvertently making the tangles even worse, becoming more enraged as a result and creating even more incomprehensible tangles, you’ve seen a good example of the fine-motor effects of a rage -based rise in heart rate.

As the heart rate rises even higher, we start to see increasingly severe consequences of the fight-or-flight state. We may experience problems with gross motor coordination, or with perception and cognition. Changes in hearing are seen. “Tunnel vision” increases. Reliance on ingrained habits, as opposed to new adaptive behaviors, becomes stronger, and we may report illusory changes in visual clarity and in the perceived passage of time. Our ability to remember accurately is diminished, and we may impulsively blurt out inappropriate and intrusive thoughts. We may experience dissociation; and at very high levels of stress, with heart rates perhaps in the 170’s, we may exhibit partial paralysis, inappropriately submissive behavior, and even loss of bowel and bladder control.

All very annoying; but as we will see in subsequent posts in the Forensic View , all of these fight-or-flight, HPA factors, however maladaptive today, were either adaptive or relatively benign in the ancient world.

Wait a minute. How could partial paralysis, submissive behavior, or loss of bowel and bladder control ever be adaptive?

Well, today, they aren’t. If a law enforcement officer today loses bowel or bladder control, it’s certainly not great for command presence. Especially in a khaki uniform.

Yet in the ancient world, when the adversary was not a human malefactor, but a great sabertooth cat with fabulous olfactory abilities, self-marination in our nastier biological byproducts may have rendered us far less appetizing; the sabertooth may have gone from “RARRGH!” to “EWWW!” in a few moments, leaving us unappetizing and uneaten, able to fight another day.

Partial paralysis? ‘Possums have been pulling that trick for millions of years, thwarting their would-be predators. Most mammals cannot tolerate the bacterial smorgasbord of the recently dead, so a motionless creature is often left untasted.

As to submission, in many species of canines and primates, a submissive posture may prevent further attacks.

These aspects of the human fight-or-flight response may have come in very handy for our remote ancestors facing sabertooth cats or dire wolves. In the modern world of gang members and homicide, perhaps not so much; but we are not only our present selves. We are also whatever our ancestors were in the past, provided the relevant characteristics found their way into our genomes. So, we may wet ourselves when facing a mugger, the same way our ancestors did when facing a short-faced bear.

Maybe these behaviors, under high stress, may have served prehistoric purposes, but let’s face it, how many of us ever approach a heart rate in the 170’s?

My friend and colleague, Professor Riccardo Fenici, has the answer.

Fenici and his colleagues (e.g., Fenici & Brisinda, 2004) studied fabulously fit young officers of the Italian federal police. These elite officers clocked in with heart rates in the low 60’s.

Then they went to the firing range.

This range involved only targets. Nothing was shooting back; the only possible hazard was that another officer might shoot better than you did, yet their heart rates rose into the 160’s.

That's a one-hundred-beat rise, in very fit young officers, deriving from nothing more than the stress of shooting competition .

Is 160 the same as 170? No, but it’s awfully close. Imagine what it might have been if the targets were shooting back, as we frequently see in real-world crime scenes.

Heightened HPA activity is a fact of life in the forensic world. It produces very specific perceptual and cognitive anomalies which are not rare, they are a major factor in the forensic analysis of virtually every violent crime.

In the next posts of the Forensic View , we will deal with each of these critically important perceptual and cognitive factors as they apply to the criminal justice system.

Fenici, R., & Brisinda, D. (2004, October). Cardiac and psycho-physiological reaction during police action and combat shooting. Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, Rome, Italy.

Sharps, M.J. (2002). Processing Under Pressure: Stress, Memory, and Decision-Making in Law Enforcement (3rd ed.). Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law Publications.

Matthew Sharps, Ph.D., professor of psychology at California State University, Fresno. He researches forensic cognitive science among other related areas.

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Self-Affirmation Improves Problem-Solving under Stress

High levels of acute and chronic stress are known to impair problem-solving and creativity on a broad range of tasks. Despite this evidence, we know little about protective factors for mitigating the deleterious effects of stress on problem-solving. Building on previous research showing that self-affirmation can buffer stress, we tested whether an experimental manipulation of self-affirmation improves problem-solving performance in chronically stressed participants. Eighty undergraduates indicated their perceived chronic stress over the previous month and were randomly assigned to either a self-affirmation or control condition. They then completed 30 difficult remote associate problem-solving items under time pressure in front of an evaluator. Results showed that self-affirmation improved problem-solving performance in underperforming chronically stressed individuals. This research suggests a novel means for boosting problem-solving under stress and may have important implications for understanding how self-affirmation boosts academic achievement in school settings.

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Stress, Time Pressure, Strategy Selection and Math Anxiety in Mathematics: A Review of the Literature

Sara caviola.

1 Department of Psychology, Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Irene C. Mammarella

2 Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

Denes Szucs

We review how stress induction, time pressure manipulations and math anxiety can interfere with or modulate selection of problem-solving strategies (henceforth “strategy selection”) in arithmetical tasks. Nineteen relevant articles were identified, which contain references to strategy selection and time limit (or time manipulations), with some also discussing emotional aspects in mathematical outcomes. Few of these take cognitive processes such as working memory or executive functions into consideration. We conclude that due to the sparsity of available literature our questions can only be partially answered and currently there is not much evidence of clear associations. We identify major gaps in knowledge and raise a series of open questions to guide further research.

Introduction

Negative feelings and stressful situations can interfere to different degrees with success in mathematical tasks (Ashcraft and Kirk, 2001 ; Maloney and Beilock, 2012 ; Vukovic et al., 2013 ). Here, we systematically review the existing literature on the relationship between experiencing worrying/demanding situations (through stress induction), time pressure manipulations, math anxiety and strategy selection. Our main question is whether stressors in mathematics drive selection of more efficient strategies (i.e., providing the best accuracy within the constraints of the new situation) or whether they cause suboptimal strategy selection due to inducing interfering worrying thoughts.

Strategic behavior (i.e., deciding between two or more available options) is used in a wide range of problem solving domains, not only in the field of education (Pillutla and Murnighan, 1995 ; Hughes, 1998 ; Olthof et al., 2011 ). A wide body of research in the decision-making field states that individuals use a variety of strategies to make choices (Abelson and Levi, 1985 ). Similarly to in the arithmetic field, the selection of a particular strategy is contingent on many task- and context-related variables (Payne et al., 1988 ), suggesting that people can also adaptively change processing strategies appropriately when modest changes occur in the structure of the problems. Stress both influences and is influenced by strategy selection, resulting in quite a strong association between strategy selection and stress responses (Starcke and Brand, 2012 ).

In the mathematical domain, a wide body of research suggests that mathematics builds on several cognitive abilities (Passolunghi et al., 2008 ; Krajewski and Schneider, 2009 ; Geary, 2011 ) implemented by an extended neural network of the brain (Goswami and Szűcs, 2011 ; Fias et al., 2013 ; Szűcs et al., 2014 ). The flexibility and adaptability of strategic behavior coordinating these cognitive abilities (Verschaffel et al., 2009 ; Rittle-Johnson et al., 2012 ) is highly important as the correct execution of arithmetic problems typically involves a series of steps, which include adaptively switching between different arithmetic strategies in order to select and apply the most efficient one (Siegler and Shipley, 1995 ; Siegler and Lemaire, 1997 ). This choice can be influenced or driven by different factors. Some of these are linked to the features of the problem itself (such as the complexity of the algorithm in Imbo and LeFevre, 2010 ). Others are related to personal features of the solver in terms of both domain-specific aspects (such as their mathematical expertise and attitudes/emotions toward math; Baroody and Dowker, 2003 ) and domain-general aspects, i.e., broader cognitive and emotional factors (Devine et al., 2012 ; Mammarella et al., 2015 ).

Among cognitive factors, the process most widely explored and strongly related to the successful performance on arithmetical tasks is working memory (WM; for review see Raghubar et al., 2010 ; Bull and Lee, 2014 ; see also Passolunghi et al., 2008 ; Friso-Van Den Bos et al., 2013 ; Szűcs, 2016 ). WM is commonly analyzed as a predictor to explain mathematic outcomes at a later point in time, and the number of studies investigating this relationship has sharply increased in recent years (Bull et al., 2008 ; LeFevre et al., 2012 ; Li and Geary, 2013 ; Caviola et al., 2014 ; Cragg and Gilmore, 2014 ; Szűcs et al., 2014 ). This evidence supports the view that WM influences math achievement in different ways: it might help to keep track of relevant information (e.g., storage and retrieval of partial results) during a problem-solving process, as well as being involved in the successful selection and implementation of procedures (Barrouillet and Lépine, 2005 ; Swanson, 2006 ; Wu et al., 2008 ; Meyer et al., 2010 ).

While important for mathematical processes, WM is also highly sensitive to interference from stressors. Ashcraft and Kirk ( 2001 ) and Ashcraft and Krause ( 2007 ) found that cognitive processes can be negatively affected by the interference of negative emotions, such as math anxiety or pressured situations. This suggests how negative feelings might overload the WM system, thus resulting in a drop in performance (e.g., failing to achieve the result due the application of an inefficient strategy). Eysenck and colleagues tried to define the interaction between negative feelings and WM by developing the Attentional Control Theory (ACT, Eysenck and Calvo, 1992 ; Eysenck and Derakshan, 2011 ). According to this theory, anxiety affects participants' performance by disrupting their ability to control attention, making them more susceptible to distraction. This theory postulates that anxiety shifts the attention to task irrelevant stimuli by reducing cognitive resources allocated to the concurrent (relevant) task. This mechanism damages the subject's efficiency, whether the distracting stimuli are external (i.e., task-irrelevant stimuli) or internal (i.e., worrying thoughts; self-preoccupation). In summary, according to this model, anxiety affects the central executive component of WM processes, leading to a reduced cognitive performance in terms of decreased task efficiency and effectiveness, particularly on complex tasks (Ramirez and Beilock, 2011 ; Mammarella et al., 2017 ). Another important determinant of mathematical strategy selection is problem difficulty or complexity. The likelihood of choosing one strategy rather than another varies with problem features (Siegler, 1996 ; Lemaire and Callies, 2009 ). Increasing problem difficulty promotes the use of more advanced computational strategies, in order to maximize efficiency while still maintaining accuracy. The complexity of a problem can be manipulated in different ways (e.g., the type of algorithm, the number of digits in the operands, the presence or absence of a carrying procedure, etc.) resulting in different WM demands (Imbo and LeFevre, 2010 ). In fact, increasing the complexity of a problem can itself act as a stressor or modulate the effect of stress on math task execution. Efficiency usually decreases when carry or borrow problems have to be performed due to an increase in WM demand (Noël et al., 2001 ; Imbo et al., 2007 ; Caviola et al., 2012 ). Previous studies have also stated that negative emotional states (i.e., math anxiety) affect complex arithmetic performance more than simple arithmetic performance (Ashcraft, 1995 ; Devine et al., 2012 ).

Stressful situations can also be induced by manipulating the context in which the problem is presented, such as punishing poor performance with social consequences, in order to interfere with cognition (Beilock and Carr, 2001 , 2005 ). In other words, taxing people's executive resources by increasing anxiety due to fear of negative consequences resulted in less efficient strategy use, and consequently poorer arithmetic performance.

In this review, we summarize the state of research about the relationship between cognitive stress and strategic behavior used to solve arithmetic tasks. The synthesis has been complicated by the use of different terms according to the specific line of research. In particular, studies on stress and math-related emotions each look at slightly different domains and consequently refer to them with slightly different terms. For example, “stress,” “negative emotions” and “anxiety” are labels which, in the mathematical research field, have often been used to describe similar states of mind that potentially can interfere with the execution of mathematical tasks (Stipek and Gralinski, 1991 ; Galla and Wood, 2012 ; Brunyé et al., 2013 ). In the first part of this article we present and discuss different conceptual and methodological approaches related to manipulating task complexity, focusing in particular on the different ways to trigger cognitive stress. In the second part we pay particular attention to time pressure manipulation, by highlighting its effect on strategy choice and cognitive processes and its relationship with emotional aspects, such as math anxiety.

Electronic searches and selection of studies

An electronic search was conducted on principal databases (PsychINFO, Web of Science, PubMed, EBSCO, Scopus) for English published articles. No date restriction was used, and the keywords were: time pressure/time constraint/time limit/time deadline; strategy/strategy selection/strategy choice/strategy efficiency; problem solving/arithmetic/math/mathematics/calculation; emotional factors/cognitive stress/anxiety/math anxiety. The search has been done with the following combinations of terms: (time pressure OR time limit OR time constraint OR time deadline) AND (arithmetic OR math * OR calculation OR problem solving) AND (strateg * ) AND (emot * OR stress OR anxiety). We used the wildcard * where alternative words like “strategic”/“strategy” or “emotion”/“emotional” might arise. As allowed by each database, the terms have been explored mainly in the title, abstract and keywords, and when possible through the entire full text.

Research was included in this review by following these inclusion criteria. First, since studies on this topic vary in their methodological design, we included those studies which clearly stated the manipulation of the execution time during the main task; second, if they considered how the time constraint affected participants' strategic behavior and consequently their results; and finally, if they have quantitatively measured emotional aspects related to math tasks. Studies aiming to highlight gender differences or that revealed different sample sizes according to gender were excluded, as well as research primarily focused on neuroimaging effects.

We considered papers published before December 2016. The initial inspection was independently completed by two reviewers (SC and EC): the electronic search identified 2,534 papers which matched the search terms. After deleting duplication 352 studies were selected. Titles and abstracts of the studies retrieved were then screened by two reviewers to identify studies that potentially met the criteria outlined above. The full text of the 129 remaining potentially eligible studies were then retrieved and independently assessed for eligibility by two reviewers: any disagreement between the two reviewers was resolved through discussion with a third reviewer (DS): 56 papers remained at this stage.

It is important to note that the inclusion criteria we used in the papers selection led us to exclude all the studies which applied a time limit constraint due to the experimental setting, i.e., studies which did not actually impose a direct time limit on the performance, but instead looked at results by setting a post-hoc deadline for responses (e.g., ERP studies for time course analysis of arithmetic information processing; Rosenberg-Lee et al., 2009 ; Hinault and Lemaire, 2016 ). A total of other 21 studies were excluded at this stage.

Finally, 35 studies attained the eligibility criteria. A pre-prepared Excel spreadsheet was used to record extracted data from the included studies for assessment of study quality and data synthesis. Study quality consisted of a risk of bias assessment: quality of individual studies was evaluated in terms of sample size and type (and number) of tasks reported for each domain (time limits/mathematical tasks/emotional factors). Where there was concern over the methodological quality of any studies, sensitivity analyses were conducted: only 19 met the selection criteria and were included in the present review (see Figure ​ Figure1). 1 ). Once the target articles had been agreed, the two independent reviewers (SC and EC), by using a customized scheme, extracted the relevant data. Besides participants' age, information about (1) experimental design and timing, including the type of arithmetical task and relative strategies, (2) emotional aspects and (3) the type of cognitive processes investigated (if present), were collected. We also noted whether studies included children (6–12 years), adolescents (13–17 years) or adults (18 years and above).

Flow chart summarizing the electronic search.

Regarding the experimental designs, we preferred not to use any restrictive classification of the mathematical tasks reported, but due to high heterogeneity, we report a description of the task itself. Specifically related to the “pressure” aspect, we tried to classify how pressure was induced in the experimental design, in particular whether (i) it was provided by inducing a time limit or by means of other manipulations (e.g., monetary incentives), (ii) in the case of time limits, we considered extensively the experimental methodology (e.g., number of conditions, time limit applied to stimuli presentations or response window).

Structure of the review

The main goal of this review was to shed light on how stress induction, particularly time pressure manipulations, can interfere with or modulate strategy selection in arithmetical tasks. Additionally, we were also interested in whether this association could be moderated by emotional and cognitive factors.

The electronic search and the subsequent screening phases highlighted how stress induction or time pressure manipulation have been differentially implemented to trigger cognitive stress during math task execution. Indeed, among the 19 relevant articles identified, 8 papers applied social constraints to induce pressure. Eleven further studies implemented a time pressure manipulation to induce pressure.

In the subsequent section of this article (Social Stress Induction and Choking under Pressure Phenomenon), we first consider those papers which induce stress and “choking under pressure” via social manipulations which do not limit time available to solve tasks. In the next section (Time Pressure in Math: Strategy Selection), we consider tasks which engaged a time pressure manipulation. These two types of pressure manipulation are different in nature for a fundamental reason: regardless of “choking under pressure,” time pressure manipulations may render a previous strategy useless due to complexity. With only limited time available, rapid heuristic strategies can become optimal simply due to their speed. Finally, in Section Emotional Aspects and Stress Manipulation, we consider those studies which actually measure affective factors (such as mathematics anxiety). There is a paucity of such studies, making firm conclusions challenging: however, they are of importance in determining the role of pressure in math tasks (see Figure ​ Figure2 2 for a graphic summary).

Graphic summary of the three principal mechanisms/relationships discussed in different sections of the manuscript.

The outcomes of the present review only partially resolve our initial questions and they can be understood more as open questions than evidence of clear associations. Each section concludes by raising a series of aspects in which this field of research may move forward.

Social stress induction and choking under pressure phenomenon

As noted, cognitive stress may influence cognitive resources (Mazzoni and Cornoldi, 1993 ; Barrouillet et al., 2007 ) and consequently affects strategic behavior in different domains, such as mathematical learning, which often involves high-pressure tests. Especially in math, where stress and anxiety are common and there is a strong desire to perform well, people may fail to perform at their best level, despite having the required skill (Benny and Banks, 2015 ).

Surveying the literature regarding stress-induced performance in mathematical domain, one of the main topics referred to is the “ choking under pressure ” phenomenon. Choking, or worse performance than expected for one's level of ability, tends to happen in situations involving performance pressure (Baumeister, 1984 ; Lewis and Linder, 1997 ; Beilock and Carr, 2001 ). Table ​ Table1 1 summarizes this research.

Studies investigating cognitive stress and “choking under pressure” phenomenon.

N, participants number; NA, not applicable .

The main hypothesis of this research field is that contextual pressure interferes with limited WM resources (Miyake and Shah, 1999 ; Jonides et al., 2008 ). According to this perspective, pressure is assumed to cause worrying off-task thoughts that result in overload of WM already engaged in the math task, similarly to math anxiety. Beilock and colleagues (Beilock et al., 2004 ; Beilock and Carr, 2005 ; Beilock and DeCaro, 2007 ; Beilock, 2008 ) investigated how individual differences in WM capacity relate to high and low pressure conditions defined by different social scenarios, such as monetary incentives or peer pressure, while subjects solve modular arithmetic problems (a complex task that can be solved by computation or estimation strategies). They found that participants with higher WM capacity were more disturbed by the pressure constraint than the subjects with less WM capacity, leading to a more significant lowering of arithmetic performance in those with higher WM capacity.

In subsequent research, Beilock and DeCaro ( 2007 ) tried to disentangle the issue of which strategy was engaged by analyzing the availability of WM resources and task complexity within a single study. In all their studies the authors manipulated the pressure condition by prompting commonly experienced pressures in everyday life, such as monetary reward, peer pressure, and social evaluation. The authors found that the difference in terms of performance between high- and low-WM participants was linked to the strategy selected to solve the problems: because high WM individuals typically use more WM-intensive strategies than low WM individuals, their strategies were affected more strongly by performance pressure (DeCaro et al., 2010 ). Similar results have also been reported in primary school children who had to solve mental arithmetic tasks (Wang and Shah, 2014 ). This data partially replicated previous findings but also added something new: the presence of a pressure condition (induced by simulating the recording of an evaluation video) affected children' math performance depending on their own cognitive resources and the specific task difficulty. In this study, high-pressure scenarios led to more errors when high WM children had to solve normal carry problems, whereas low WM children choked under pressure when they had to solve hidden carry problems, i.e., problems that can only be solved successfully through computational strategies. No such distinction emerged from individual differences in WM with simpler no-carry problems, regardless of the pressure. This effect seems to be strictly connected to the strategy selected and applied to solve the problem. According to the authors, these problems could be solved with two main strategies: computational strategies, that are WM demanding, or more heuristic and estimation strategies. Children' decision to use computational strategies or easier heuristics to solve problems is dependent on both task complexity and a subject's available working memory resources, influenced by the presence of pressure. In the pressure condition, low WM children were not able to rely on computationally demanding strategies to solve for hidden carry problems, so were forced to use the less demanding and also less accurate heuristic strategies. These results show that different strategies are optimal depending on the mental state induced by the problem context. When a factor reducing WM capacity is in place, students may be better to use less accurate but less WM-intensive strategies. On the other hand, when WM capacity is higher, more WM-intensive and higher accuracy strategies are more worthwhile (Beilock and DeCaro, 2007 ; Benny and Banks, 2015 ; DeCaro et al., 2016 ).

Recently, Sattizahn et al. ( 2016 ) replicated previous results demonstrating that adults with high WM resources performed significantly worse due to experiencing high pressure. They also tested individuals' variability in attentional control processes, finding that differences in attentional control influenced the effect of a pressure situation. Those with low attentional control suffered decreased performance under pressure, whereas those with high attentional control did not. This likely reflects that some individuals are able to prevent the interfering effect of pressure on their performance, whereas other with lower attentional control are not able to do this.

Although the above studies seem to answer a distinctive question (how can pressure influence math performance?), they differ in so many aspects, making it difficult to reach a certain answer. For example, all the above research aimed to analyze the effect of pressure on math, but none of them implemented a quantifiable manipulation of pressure with controlled conditions. Instead, they engaged social scenarios which could differentially affect each participant. Similarly, the mathematical tasks and cognitive measures considered vary widely across studies. In order to clarify findings in this domain it is important to systematically consider the role of task difficulty, the nature of the tasks themselves (those that allow for multiple strategies vs. those that do not), and the type of pressure manipulation used in the different studies. This leads to another question: how else can cognitive stress be induced in the math domain?

Time pressure in math: strategy selection

A large amount of literature from the decision-making field suggests that manipulating the time limit/pressure associated with a task has a very strong effect on the stressful nature of that particular task (e.g., Kerstholt, 1994 ; Ordóñez and Benson, 1997 ; Huber and Kunz, 2007 ; Young et al., 2012 ; Cone and Rand, 2014 ; Byrne et al., 2015 ). However, in the mathematical cognition field few studies have considered a time deadline as an important interference source and explicitly manipulated it by inserting in the experimental design at least two separate conditions; one with and one without a time limit.

One of the first studies on this topic attempted to simulate a computational model of automated and controlled processing during the execution of addition problems in trinary notation: Richardson and Hunt ( 1985 ) addressed the issue of how “problem solving sometimes takes place under severe real time constraints” by inserting a series of interruptions during stimulus presentation. Subsequent research has manipulated the time limit using more controlled experimental designs, across a variety of mathematical tasks, such as numerosity judgment (Luwel and Verschaffel, 2003 ) arithmetical problems (Kellogg et al., 1999 ; Campbell and Austin, 2002 ), probabilistic and proportional reasoning (Gillard et al., 2009 ; Agus et al., 2015 ), and algebraic concepts (McNeil et al., 2010 ; Chesney et al., 2013 ). A summary of the studies which implemented a time pressure manipulation is listed in Table ​ Table2 2 .

Studies investigating strategy selection (positions 1–8) and emotional aspects (position 9–11) with time condition manipulation.

As in the decision-making domain, time pressure in mathematics has been manipulated primarily by limiting available time for each decision or choice. Several studies have shown that time pressure interferes with decision-making by altering strategy selection. The presence of a time constraint in any math or problem-solving situation can affect performance: the presence of time limits could either encourage students' engagement with the task or increase choice of the wrong strategy for that task (Beilock and DeCaro, 2007 ; Rieskamp and Hoffrage, 2008 ). Leaving an open time window to complete a task enables participants to get a greater amount of information by focusing attention on important task features, which results in the best strategy selection (Payne et al., 1988 ; Siegler and Lemaire, 1997 ; Rieskamp and Hoffrage, 2008 ; Heinze et al., 2009 ). According to this viewpoint, Gillard et al. ( 2009 ) manipulated time pressure by reducing the solution time or introducing a concurrent task, leading to a self-imposed time constraint to complete the main task (see for Rieskamp and Hoffrage, 2008 ). The authors compared heuristic (which engage faster and automatic processes) and analytic processes during the execution of proportional and non-proportional problems in university students in two different experiments. They found that limiting students' resources, by reducing their response time or loading their working memory system, resulted in an increase in the wrong choice of heuristic proportional solution strategy.

Thus, time pressure is one factor that influencing which strategy people select to deal with a particular math problem situation (Young et al., 2012 ; Alison et al., 2013 ). McNeil and colleagues investigated how time pressure can influence the strategies used by both adults and children to solve equation problems. They found that under time pressure, university students used the same typical arithmetic strategies applied by children to solve mathematical equivalence problems, demonstrating how people can shift from more complex to simpler strategies when they are under pressured conditions (Mcneil and Alibali, 2005 ; McNeil et al., 2010 ; Chesney et al., 2013 ). Similarly, Campbell and Austin ( 2002 ) used a time limit manipulation when adults were solving simple addition problems in order to alter their strategy choice. The author imposed a fast deadline (750 ms) to force adult participants to use a retrieval strategy, and a slower one (2,500 ms) to elicit use of procedural strategy (e.g., counting or transformation). Results indicated adaptive strategic behavior (Siegler and Lemaire, 1997 ) which was influenced by problem features. The fast deadline resulted in a small effect on retrieval strategy usage for smaller problems, where fact retrieval was used under both conditions. On the other hand, for larger problems, participants report decreased use of procedural strategies under the faster condition. The time pressure imposed by the fast deadline adaptively modified the participants' selection strategy increasing the attempts to solve larger problems by a retrieval strategy. For large problems under the time pressure condition, retrieval strategy was both faster and more accurate than a multistep procedure, making this an example of adaptive strategy selection.

A similar pattern of results has been found by Luwel and Verschaffel ( 2003 ) testing the estimation strategies of sixth graders under three different time pressure conditions. In this study, participants were asked to determine the number of filled blocks in a 10 × 10 grid as accurately and fast as possible, according to time pressure conditions, operated by introducing three temporal windows of stimulus presentation (5, 10, or 20 s). To accomplish the task, participants would engage three possible strategies, identified in prior studies, each of which is expected to elicit a specific pattern of response times (and deviation scores) as a function of the number of blocks present (Luwel et al., 2000 , 2001 ). Analysis of the results revealed that children's performance was also affected by increasing time pressure on strategy repertoire, relative frequency of strategy use and efficiency of strategy execution, indicating that even at a young age children seem able to adapt their strategy use to the external task demands, in terms of coping with the given time restrictions (for a different pattern of results, see Schunn et al., 1997 ).

The overall results highlight that time pressure adjusts the strategy decision process generating a sort of strategy costs and benefits trade-off: when the available time is short and the task complexity is substantial (i.e., Campbell and Austin, 2002 ), strategies that can be applied rapidly represent the more appropriate choice. On the other hand, leaving an open time window to complete a task enables participants to get a greater amount of information by using a slower but more accurate strategy (Payne et al., 1988 ; Siegler and Lemaire, 1997 ; Rieskamp and Hoffrage, 2008 ; Heinze et al., 2009 ). A reduction in execution time allowed to solve a mathematical task can lead to a decrease of information that can be collected. The importance of reaction time analysis in the study of mathematical processes is widely acknowledged, above all in the domain of strategy selection (DeCaro et al., 2016 ). For example, it is worth noting that switching between complex and shortcut strategies incurs a cost to reaction time (e.g., Luwel et al., 2009 ; Schillemans et al., 2009 ; Lemaire and Lecacheur, 2010 ), but this can be directly tested only when the experimental paradigm requires there to be no time limit in place.

Emotional aspects and stress manipulation

The negative emotional state and discomfort felt during performance of mathematical tasks is commonly referred to as math anxiety (Hembree, 1990 ; Ma, 1999 ; Ma and Xu, 2004 ). The current consensus is that math anxiety is negatively correlated with mathematical performance (Ashcraft, 2002 ; Devine et al., 2012 ; Carey et al., 2016 ; Hill et al., 2016 ). Most of the research measures math anxiety levels through self-report questionnaires detecting a sort of “offline” measure rather than testing anxiety levels while solving math problems (e.g., Trezise and Reeve, 2014 , 2015 ). This assessment of math anxiety implicitly leads one to assume that it is an enduring anxiety (trait) rather than an anxiety state experienced whilst solving particular problems. On the other hand, manipulating time pressure during a mathematical task might elicit an online anxiety state that allows accurate analysis of how anxiety can disrupt or interfere with arithmetic task execution.

Although it seems to be widely recognized that providing a reasonable time for the accomplishment of a math test should be effective in reducing at least some of the disadvantage experienced by math anxious subjects (Faust et al., 1996 ; Ashcraft and Kirk, 2001 ), surprisingly little research directly includes a time condition manipulation. To our knowledge, only three studies involved a clear time pressure manipulation for testing the effect of math anxiety on mathematical tasks (see Table ​ Table2, 2 , studies numbered 9–11).

Plass and Hill ( 1986 ) analyzed the relation between problem solving ability, test anxiety and gender differences in 155 third- and fourth-grade primary school children. The sample was divided into three groups (low, middle, and high test-anxiety) either under time or no-time pressure conditions. Under time pressure, high- and middle-anxiety children performed worse than low-anxiety children of both genders. The removal of time pressure strongly improved performance for anxious boys but not for girls.

Tsui and Mazzocco ( 2006 ) examined the effects of math anxiety on math performance, under timed and untimed testing conditions in 36 sixth grade primary school children. They found a general pattern of reduced accuracy in math performance under the timed testing condition. This was influenced by participants' math anxiety level: higher anxiety children performed equally under timed and untimed testing conditions. Conversely, lower anxiety children had decreased math performance under timed condition. Although there was no main effect of gender on timed vs. untimed math performance, boys were equally accurate on timed and untimed testing, by contrast, girls showed a discrepancy in accuracy in favor of untimed conditions. They explain this pattern of results in terms of facilitating anxiety: according to the authors, the performance of gifted children with high math anxiety did not drop under time pressure because of math anxiety canceling out the negative effect of time pressure; effect that was present for lower math anxiety children.

These outcomes do not converge with Kellogg et al. ( 1999 ) who tested 30 undergraduate university students divided into three different groups according their math anxiety level. Participants were asked to solve a series of arithmetical tasks in both a timed and untimed condition. Kellogg et al. ( 1999 ) did not observe any difference between high and low anxiety individuals, although the timing manipulation negatively affected the arithmetic performance of both groups. The authors stated that time pressure manipulation had an additive effect with anxiety on arithmetic performance. Consequently, although “worry” may adversely affect the performance of highly anxious individuals (Eysenck and Calvo, 1992 ), it does not appear that the level of worry is differentially related to the amount of time assigned to perform a mathematical task. In other words, they concluded that time pressure was not a contributor to the worrisome thoughts that occupy individuals with high math anxiety during arithmetic testing.

In sum, there is some evidence that math anxiety interacts with timed or high-stakes conditions to cause a further performance decrement than usual. However, due to the paucity and heterogeneity of research both in terms of sample and tasks considered, these results do not allow us to conclude that increasing time pressure has a differential effect depending on math anxiety. Similarly, assuming causal relations between time pressure and inducing math anxiety currently does not have evidential support.

General conclusions

This literature overview of the past 30 years focuses on the effect of stress and/or time pressure on math proficiency. It has revealed that, generally speaking, pressure has a great influence on both strategic and emotional aspects of task execution.

Research on choking and excelling under pressure has focused on tasks that demand many cognitive resources, especially working memory (Miyake and Shah, 1999 ; Jonides et al., 2008 ). Similarly, some research on math anxiety suggest that trait anxiety also reduces effective working memory capacity (Ashcraft and Kirk, 2001 ; Ashcraft and Krause, 2007 ). This suggests that anxiety impairs performance by overloading working memory. Specifically, pressure is expected to lead to worry, concern and other distracting thoughts about performance, which consume working memory resources (Beilock and Carr, 2005 ).

It has been widely assumed that people are equipped with a range of cognitive strategies which they adaptively select and apply according to the specific task and situation. Within this framework, pressure represents one factor that can influence which strategy people select to deal with a particular situation. Relatively little research has focused on the impact of time pressure on strategy selection in mathematics, principally aiming to show how time pressure interferes with the decision process in terms of strategy selection in mathematical domain. Results seem to suggest that time pressure generally acts as a stressor, causing suboptimal strategy selection. However, the causal mechanism of this is still unclear. It is not clear whether time pressure interferes with strategy selection or whether it simply renders the optimal strategy impossible, due to an overload of working memory resources.

Further research is needed to address this question, taking into account the huge variability of execution time linked to task type (e.g., simple vs. complex calculation or even verification vs. production task; Ashcraft, 1995 ; Rousselle and Noël, 2008 ). For example, the answer modality of a math task (verification vs. production) can strongly influence and drive the solution process itself, and consequently the strategies applied to solve the task. Sometimes, experimenters chose to adopt a verification mode (i.e., namely a choice among a series of alternatives) compared to a production task (i.e., participant is asked to produce/give the right answer) for time limit issues linked to the experimental setting or data analyses (e.g., ERP study for time course analysis of arithmetic information processing; time limit set up only during data analysis to identify outliers or specific retrieval answers). Within this perspective, the studies summarized in the “ choking under pressure ” section mainly reported verification tasks, conversely, the experiments listed in the other subsequent sections were often production tasks, making it harder to provide general conclusions based on this methodological aspect.

Similar considerations can be drawn regarding the relationship between time pressure and emotional aspects within the mathematical learning framework, leaving space for several open questions. Among them is whether time pressure can be always considered as a negative factor in terms of proficiency and math anxiety. To date the literature does not clearly answer this issue. Decreased performance under time pressure is not consistently observed in high or low math anxiety individuals. Previous problem-solving studies suggest that time constraints inhibit creative thinking; but more recent research indicates that time constraints can sometimes prove beneficial (Medeiros et al., 2014 ). An alternative explanation of this inconsistent pattern may be found in the social pressure literature by considering where individuals focus their attention during the performance. It may be important whether attention is directed on the process of performance or to the outcome of performance: these situational aspects of the attentional system may affect results. Pressure does not simply cause a reduction in executive resources; it changes one's motivational state, leading to failure or success with different types of tasks due to the availability of attentional resources during performance (see e.g., Markman et al., 2006 ; Worthy et al., 2009 ).

To sum, the present review demonstrates the need for a broader view of the effects of time pressure on math performance. Future research should systematically examine the effects of time pressure on math performance and strategy selection to develop a fuller framework of phenomena that drive choking or excelling under pressure.

Author contributions

SC and DS developed the study concept. Literature review was conducted by SC and EC. SC and IM drafted the manuscript. DS provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. The project leading to this application has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 700031.

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From poor performance to success under stress: working memory, strategy selection, and mathematical problem solving under pressure

Affiliation.

• 1 Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 17983308
• DOI: 10.1037/0278-7393.33.6.983

Two experiments demonstrate how individual differences in working memory (WM) impact the strategies used to solve complex math problems and how consequential testing situations alter strategy use. In Experiment 1, individuals performed multistep math problems under low- or high-pressure conditions and reported their problem-solving strategies. Under low-pressure conditions, the higher individuals' WM, the more likely they were to use computationally demanding algorithms (vs. simpler shortcuts) to solve the problems, and the more accurate their math performance. Under high-pressure conditions, higher WM individuals used simpler (and less efficacious) problem-solving strategies, and their performance accuracy suffered. Experiment 2 turned the tables by using a math task for which a simpler strategy was optimal (produced accurate performance in few problem steps). Now, under low-pressure conditions, the lower individuals' WM, the better their performance (the more likely they relied on a simple, but accurate, problem strategy). And, under pressure, higher WM individuals performed optimally by using the simpler strategies lower WM individuals employed. WM availability influences how individuals approach math problems, with the nature of the task performed and the performance environment dictating skill success or failure.

PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.

Publication types

• Comparative Study
• Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
• Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
• Adaptation, Psychological / physiology*
• Analysis of Variance
• Choice Behavior*
• Decision Making
• Mathematics
• Memory, Short-Term / physiology*
• Practice, Psychological
• Problem Solving*
• Reaction Time / physiology
• Reference Values
• Stress, Psychological / psychology*