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The Power of Positive Recollections: Reducing Test Anxiety and Enhancing College Student Efficacy and Performance
Author(s) -
Nelson Donna Webster,
Knight Ashley E.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00595.x
Subject(s) - psychology , anxiety , task (project management) , affect (linguistics) , test (biology) , social psychology , test anxiety , intervention (counseling) , control (management) , power (physics) , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry , paleontology , physics , management , communication , quantum mechanics , economics , biology
This research sought to develop an intervention (targeting positive emotions and thoughts) as a mechanism for reducing test anxiety and raising confidence and performance in a sample of college students. Participants were randomly assigned to a positive thought task or a control task. Those in the positive‐thought condition, who were assigned to write about successful personal experiences, derived several benefits, when compared with control participants who wrote about their morning routines. Specifically, they experienced more positive affect and less negative affect, exhibited a more optimistic outlook, and reported less test anxiety. They were more likely to appraise the quiz confidently, perceiving it as a challenge rather than a threat. Perhaps most importantly, they exhibited superior performance on the quiz.