<ul><li><b>Positive stress mindset</b>: recognizing that stressful challenges can sharpen your focus, strengthen your motivation, and offer opportunities for growth.</li><li><b>Negative stress mindset</b>: viewing stress as unpleasant, debilitating and negative.</li></ul>

The stress mindset

<p>Those who believe in the potential benefits of stress are less prone to feeling stressed in the wake of difficult life events. </p><p>If you do have a negative stress mindset, there are ways to turn it around.</p>

Positive stress mindset

<p><i>"Anytime you have low expectations for performance, you tend to sink down and meet those low expectations. Self-affirmation is a way to neutralize that threat."</i></p>

<p>When put under time pressure, people tend to act more like themselves: <i>selfish people tend to act more selfishly than usual, while pro-social people behave even more pro-socially.</i></p><p>But time pressure can also improve decision-making because it forces people to make tough decisions.</p>

Time pressure

<p>Sending a text to a partner confronted with a difficult task really can make them feel more supported.</p><p><i>When you're under psychological pressure, being reminded that there's someone out there who really cares for you seems to be more helpful than receiving targeted advice.</i></p>

Showing support

<ul><li>being deliberately focused on the task in hand</li><li>maintaining intense effort over a period of time</li><li>feeling high arousal levels</li><li>not thinking about the negative consequences of failure.</li></ul>

Excelling under pressure

<div>
<p>You're preparing for an important meeting, and the pressure's on. If it's bad now, how will you cope when you actually have to perform? Will you fly? Or will you sink?</p>
<p>Psychologists have a lot to say about how to cope under pressure... both the chronic kind, which might involve ongoing high expectations at work, for example; and the acute, single-event variety such as a vital meeting, a make-or-break presentation, or a sports match.</p>
<h4>The stress mindset</h4>
<p>The evidence from this particular study is not strong. But some support for the idea that trying to big yourself up, rather than to put yourself down, can help in high pressure situations comes from a study in which Sonia Kang at the University of Toronto and her team studied a group of MBA students. The researchers put some into positions of low power in a negotiating situation, and found that these participants performed worse under pressure than those who'd been given more power over the outcome. However, when "low power" students first spent five minutes writing about their most important negotiating skill, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167215577365">this neutralised the power differential effect on performance</a>. "Anytime you have low expectations for performance, you tend to sink down and meet those low expectations," Kang observed. "Self-affirmation is a way to neutralize that threat."</p>
<h4>Time</h4>
<p>However, if you are going into a negotiating situation, you may also want to bear this in mind: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05994-9">when put under time pressure, people tend to act more like themselves</a>, according to a recent paper in <em>Nature Communications</em>. Researchers Fandong Chen and Ian Krajbich, based in China and the US, found that when there was little time available to make a decision about how to divide a pot of money, selfish people tended to act more selfishly than usual, while pro-social people behaved even more pro-socially. In theory, either could be useful - depending on what you want out of an interaction.</p>
<p>MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images</p>
<h4>A helping hand</h4>
<p>Whether you're a hospital manager awaiting an influx of injured patients, or a lecturer or a student about to go into a vital meeting or exam, you're likely approaching the point of maximum pressure. What can help?</p>
<h4>Choking and clutch</h4>
<p>The participants in this study were asked to play a computer-based game in which they could win money. But when they were instructed to imagine that they already had the high prize money on offer, and were playing for the chance to keep it, rather than to gain it, they were much less likely to choke. (The researchers tied this to altered levels of activity in a region of the brain called the ventral striatum.) A skin conductance measure also showed that this reappraisal prevented heightened stress when they failed. Playing make-believe had, it seems, taken the pressure out of the situation.</p>
<p>More work needs to be done to explore the potential benefits of this approach, as well as the positive stress mindset, in real-world situations. But next time you're under pressure to perform, why not try embracing the opportunity to achieve - and imagine that you've already succeeded?</p>
<p><a href="https://emmayoung.net/">Emma Young</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/EmmaELYoung">@EmmaELYoung</a>) is Staff Writer at <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/">BPS Research Digest</a>.</p>
<p>Reprinted with permission of <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/">The British Psychological Society</a>. Read the <a href="https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/09/17/how-to-cope-under-pressure-according-to-psychology/">original article</a>.</p>
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A helping handWhether you're a hospital manager awaiting an influx of injured patients, or a lecturer or a student about to go into a vital meeting or exam, you're likely approaching the point of maximum pressure. What can help?You might hope for a text message from a friend or romantic partner.

How to cope under pressure, according to psychology

The stress mindset

Positive stress mindset

SONIA KANG, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Time pressure

Showing support

Excelling under pressure

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