Individual Assignment 01

            In The Wall Street Journal article, “Use Stress to Your Advantage; To Perform Under Pressure, Research Finds that Welcoming Anxiety is More Helpful that Calming Down,” Kelly McGonigal explains research that says embracing anxiety is more effective than trying to calm yourself in a stressful situation. Within the article, Alison Wood Brooks, a Harvard Business School professor, discusses her own experiment about embracing stress. Brooks mentions that majority of people believe that trying to calm down is the best way to reduce anxiety, but the best way is to actually appears to be to welcome your anxiety. Welcoming and accepting anxiety does not reduce all nervousness, but it increases one’s confidence and ability to cope with pressure (McGonigal 2015).

            Jeremy Jamieson, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester, adds into the conversation by noting how anxiety is viewed so negatively by society, but it can actually be a good thing. Jamieson conducted a study on college students taking the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) by measuring their levels of alpha-amylase, a stress hormone indicator. A portion of the students received a pep talk explaining that embracing stress and anxiety can improve performance while the rest of the student received no pep talk. The results showed that students who heard the pep talk received better scores on the GRE, but they also presented higher levels of alpha-amylase compared to those who did not hear a pep talk. After further investigation, Jamieson concluded that the stress hormone alpha-amylase had no connection to students’ performance on the test (McGonigal 2015).

            A study published in Anxiety, Stress, and Coping took a different approach and had University of Lisbon students conduct their own studies of anxiety and stress. Students were asked to log their anxiety levels and to explain how the interpreted their anxiety. The study concluded that students who viewed their anxiety as less harmful experienced lower levels of emotional exhaustion. Students who embraced their anxiety also earned higher grades by the end of the semester. Researcher at Jacobs University in Germany also applied these findings to demanding jobs. Viewing anxiety more positively decreases a person’s chance of feeling “burned out” by the end of the year (McGonigal 2015).

            This concept of stress was not explicitly confronted in the book. Chapter six of the textbook explained the increased stress on singles in the office, but does not mentioned forms of coping or accepting stress. But, this article provides insight on how to handle stress and anxiety. As we discussed in class, stress and anxiety levels may be high in business. This is especially true for business owners and singles in the workplace. McGonigal’s article directly related to our textbook and class discussions by providing coping mechanisms for these business stressors.

References

McGonigal, K. (2015 May 15). Use Stress to Your Advantage; To Perform Under Pressure,

Research Finds That Welcoming Anxiety is More Helpful Than Calming Down. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com

https://search.proquest.com/docview/1680986071/1CE4262A2A054747PQ/3?accountid=26763#center