The Learner Lab

The Science of Being Better When You're Nervous with Ceci Clark and Jeremy Jamieson

March 19, 2019 Trevor Ragan, Alex Belser Season 1 Episode 5
The Learner Lab
The Science of Being Better When You're Nervous with Ceci Clark and Jeremy Jamieson
Show Notes Transcript

When the performance matters we're going to feel some pressure, nerves, and stress. Whether it's a big presentation, a test, or even a date - most people think the most effective way to prepare for these situations is to try and calm down. In this episode, we dig into research that shows why this is a poor approach and the look at how we can do better. We learn how Ceci Clark, Mental Performance Coach for the Cleveland Indians, helps major leaguers perform better under pressure. We also bring in Jeremy Jamieson, Director of University of Rochester's Social Stress Lab, to help explain the science behind stress and how changing our perception of it can lead to better performance.

Full Show Notes

Quick Links:
GRE Study
Reappraisal Research by Allison Wood Brooks
Jeremy Jamieson - Director of the Social Stress Lab: University of Rochester
Ceci Clark - Mental Performance Coach: Cleveland Indians
TrainUgly.com
Question hotline: 805-635-8459

Speaker 1:

You're sitting in the hard plastic chair and your next step in the fourth grade spelling bee.

Speaker 2:

That's correct.

Speaker 1:

You're walking to the free throw line down by one with five seconds left. You're about to give a ted talk. You're sitting in the lobby before your dream job interview. How do you feel in those situations? I know I'm going to be nervous. Yeah, we're going to be feeling a little something, something right. Heart rate up, maybe some sweaty palms face. Blushy absolutely shaking a little bit. The cold, clammy hands. Those are normal responses when we're in those high pressure situations, big or small. The question I want you to think about is what would you tell yourself then? What would you tell someone else when they're feeling like this? No, really like what would you tell yourself? If you're like most of us, then you would probably say something along the lines of, calm down, calm down, settle down. It's no big deal. Relax. Research shows that over 90% of people think that that is the best approach. When we're nervous, the best thing we can do is work to calm down. Today, we're going to show you why that's exactly the wrong approach and then we're going to look at some effective strategies to help everyone perform their best under pressure.

Speaker 3:

I'm Trevor, I'm Alex. Welcome to the learner lab podcast presented by train ugly.com each week something new that can help us learn. Let's go.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's look back at this like calm down. Now there's a lot of ways to say that.

Speaker 3:

Everybody stay calm. What's the procedure,

Speaker 4:

right? We can't have anyone free God out there. Okay, got a k Barker Paul Jr

Speaker 1:

calm down. Don't be afraid. They're all kind of saying the same thing. The big problem here, when we tell ourself or others to calm down, the big underlying message there is how you're feeling right now is not good. You should stop drilling, right? And then when that happens, we try to minimize those. Exactly. Want to avoid it. They call this trying to like suppress those feelings and the research shows that actually trying to suppress this stress is actually the worst thing we can do. And in many studies it makes the feeling worse. Our brain is activated, our Amygdala is activated. Even the physiology around this is more active and more activated. When we tell people to suppress it. It sort of makes sense too, because if, if we're told that's not the way you should be feeling that we kind of snowball into this effect of, well, if I'm not supposed to be feeling that way, but I am feeling that way, something must be wrong. And then it can also become a source of stories. So like we're trying to suppress. That's not working. We still feel anxious. Then the stories come, I'm not prepared. I don't belong here. I'm not ready. No one else feels like this. Right? And so this suppression not only makes it worse, but can also start to create some really destructive between our ears. If suppression doesn't work, then what? What should we be doing instead? One logical next step is, okay, suppression doesn't work. Therefore it just accept the emotions. And a lot of people say that, but there's actually an even better approach according to the research and they call it reappraising it, which is like changing the way we interpret those feelings and not get response.

Speaker 5:

We teach our guys about what, uh, indicators of nervousness actually are.

Speaker 1:

That's CC Clark. She's the mental performance coach of the Cleveland Indians.

Speaker 5:

So when we're talking about butterfly shaking, a brain racing, sweating, all that kind of stuff, uh, we have a totally negative appraisal of those. We think that they are indicators that you're not ready. And in fact by like if you look at physiologically what their uses, I'm shaking his motor neurons going out to your extremities faster. So it actually gives you a faster reaction time, a butterflies in your stomach or that your digestive assessment system set down. And so yeah, you of feel your stomach, no, not digesting. And with the action excess acid is doing, um, the dry mouth is that you've sat down saliva into your mouth because you're not going to eat during that time. So there's like actually really good reasons. All these things happen. And so we teach them to actually positively feel good about those things.

Speaker 1:

The big idea here is that our body's responses, yes,

Speaker 3:

useful. And it's prepping ourselves for this moment. Yes, it's mobilized for action. There's a, this is a human response and it's actually a useful resource. Right? And one thing I want to be clear on, we're talking about the feelings when we're anticipating like a big moment, a big performance, right? We're not talking about the feelings afterwards. We're talking about those things leading up to it. And when we were saying performance, this could be a date, a test presentation, big speech. Like when we're performing under pressure, that's what we're talking about. Reappraising those emotions and understanding that those are good. So one interesting study that deals with reappraisal is this GRE study that was done by Jeremy[inaudible].

Speaker 6:

Listen, Jeremy Jamison, I'm the associate professor at the University of Rochester.

Speaker 1:

And in this study they had two different groups of college students, Harvard Students, I think actually, yeah.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. We're looking at, um, so we were looking at students who are preparing for this. Maybe it's a stressful occurrence where you're taking a standardized tasks that has a lot of importance for whether you're going to get into different Grad schools or not. Um, and so what we did is we took a sample of people who were preparing for that and we brought them to lab to juice over practice tests. And so we'd try to mimic the testing situation.

Speaker 1:

So they, they have these two groups of students and both of them are sitting down to take the exam and then they give one student or one group of students, they don't give anything. They're just like take the exam control group. And then the other group of students, they give them a short paragraph that basically says it's normal to feel anxious on this. And those nerves can actually help you perform better on this test.

Speaker 6:

Telling people that like, yeah, you're going to be, it's a stretch. Stressful. And I'm trying to pretend that like this test isn't stressful. It's stressful. You're going to be highly aroused. You better be sort of like your heart's mean beating fast. You're comes to be sweaty, but that's fine. And so it's more of like, that's actually good. It's not like this is bad. It's not something you've voided. This is good. If you were disengaged and you didn't care, that'd be bad.

Speaker 1:

Both groups go in and take the practice GRE and then what they found is that the group that received that reappraisal, they call it an intervention, but the group that received that information actually did better on their GRE scores than the group that didn't have that information. Wow. And I think the really incredible thing about this study is that three months later these students took the actual GRE. So the students took the actual no longer in the lab. They went and took this. They're actually taking this to get into to graduate school. Same effects applied. So the students who received that short intervention, just that paragraph, right? Right. They did better on the GRE

Speaker 6:

and so it wasn't just like this lab situation where it helps isolate setting it. It kind of generalize

Speaker 1:

these small seeds that were planted. Actually, the benefits showed up months down the road and no other contact was made. Right. It's not like they were doing refreshers, like these simple lessons that feeling these nerves is good because then maybe took five minutes to read that page and then it had lasting impacts all the way through the next couple of months. Unreal. But that's not the only study that shows these lasting impacts. They also did one with a group of students that were graduating from high school and then going into college and they gave them like a couple of week course in the summertime before they went to college on sort of the reappraise reappraisal process. Yeah. And they found that their grades were actually higher than the control groups even in their sophomore year of college years later. So that's like one to two years after that they were still seeing these effect from this little intervention that they did. Now a few things we need to be clear on, this is not a substitute for the practice and preparation. Like the students were all prepared to take the test. They had all these resources behind them, they had prepared for this and studied and

Speaker 6:

yeah. Well how stress can be helpful. So I'm going to help you like retreat memory if you don't have that thing in memory, but it helps you here on the street 92 and then we'll say stress, bad stress reappraisals on works cause you people don't think stresses and useful and so they try and do as they try to like ignore it, like try to like get rid of it. They sort of like pay attention to the stress rather than pay attention to doing what they need to do.

Speaker 1:

The way we think about it is our emotional response. That feeling, that anticipation can either help or hurt us as far as performing under pressure and it's dependent on the way we appraise it, right? If we try to suppress it, it's probably going to hurt us. We won't perform at our best. If we can reappraise it and use it as a tool, it will help us perform at our best. I kind of think of this like, uh, you know those weighted vests they makes that had like 15 extra pounds of your body, right? So if you were going to run a mile and you were trying to do your best time, if you had that, that weighted vest on, sure, you're not going to run super right because it's kind of weighing you down. But if you take that off, then you can hit your full potential. There's, they're not going to run faster than you're capable, luckily. But yes, it's, it's no longer wing you down. And the problem is when we interpret the stress in this ineffective way, right? Or try to suppress it, it can snowball. And that becomes the weight, the limitation of our potential there. Exactly. That's a perfect way to think about it. We don't really control how we feel, but we can control our response, which impacts our performance. Right.

Speaker 6:

Um, there some really nice research. I, Alison, what threats at a Harvard business school as the school studies where they've all got three kinds of people who are in this kind of, this exists, it's excitable. I arousal positive stress state and be able to form the calm people like every time.

Speaker 1:

So she looked at three activities that really induce some stress. Public speaking, a math test and singing. Yep. All of those are pretty stressful. And so each, each one looks at sort of a different angle. So let's kind of go through all three. The first one, public speaking in this study, the students were taken into a room. They sat him in the room and they said in 10 minutes you have to give a two minute speech in front of a panel of strangers. And then they had to sit there for like 10 minutes to think about with with just your thoughts. And then they went out and, and gave the talk. Now there was two groups participating in the study. One group before they gave the talk had to say, and they told him, really try to feel this. I am excited. So this is sort of the reappraisal group like right. How you're feeling is useful. It's a good thing. Right? The other group, before they gave their speech, they had to say, I am calm. Okay. So that's the suppression. So exactly. So this is kind of a war of reappraisal versus suppression. What happened according to the judges across the board, what they found is the reappraisal group seemed more persuasive, more competent, more confident and more persistent than the I am calm group. It's all the things that we want. Right? Absolutely. All those things are helpful and across the board, that group was better than the suppression group, the calm down group. So this one's kind of looking at sort of our self talk, what we're saying between our ears turn that room. But I am excited. I am calm. Right. Then they wanted to look at the other side of the fence of like what we're hearing from the outside. So on this math study they actually had three groups. So group one before they took the math exam from an outside source was told, get excited group too. From the outside source was told, calm down. And then in this one they actually had a control group that was told nothing at all. Okay. So we have a baseline with them. Exactly. And the results were consistent with the first study. The reappraisal groups scored better across the board. Then the group that was told to calm down. Oh, so this is, this shows that we can do this both as individuals and what leaders us matters. Absolutely. Both sides of the fence, like what self talk and what teachers, parents, coaches, leaders are telling to our people. We can influence the way that people appraise this, their stress, it's going to change. How we interpret those physiological things influences the way they perform, which is something that we all care about. Right? I think this portion of the study might be like the most useful and tangible nugget we can take away and now, and I think that comes in analyzing the group that was told to calm down. Okay. So okay, you tell me to calm down. Right? And now I'm taking like a high pressure math test where I'm probably going to be nervous. You're going to feel some stuff. Anticipation in the anticipation. I feel nervous. So then I assume some things wrong because you told me to calm down, but then I'm not right. And so I'm interpreting these emotions as a negative thing. Whereas the group who's taught get excited, like I'm going to appraise these as a positive thing. Okay. Time for my favorite one, the singing portion. So this one, you went into a room alone with a stranger and they had an intender we and you had to sing. Don't stop believing kind of a random tourists. That sounds like a terrifying. Just saying that made me feel kind of weird. Once again, they had three groups, but this one, there's a little manipulation rather than comparing the reappraisal. I'm excited with the suppression. They wanted to compare reappraisal with sort of just accepting it. Okay. So like we already know that suppression is bad and that didn't work. So we're going to compare it to try it. Just to kind of owning it and accepting it. Okay. Okay. So what happened? Group one before they sing the song was again, they had to say it like I'm excited. Group to the acceptance group said I'm anxious. Kind of owning the fact that they're nervous. Right. And then they had the control group that was told nothing at all. Right. Our baseline control group scored a 69% like the song scores you, the control group that was told nothing at all scored a 69% on average on the song that the I am anxious group, 53% so kind of a drop in performance in the group that was taught to reappraise it as a useful response scored an 81% wow. Huge boost in performance. Small adjustment to the way we're sort of embracing these emotions or they were just told to say I'm excited. It's like I'm embracing this. This is good. This is useful across the board. This research shows when we reappraise we actually help performance when we're trying to suppress. We actually hurt the performance. One last thing that she showed in all three studies in all of these studies, they hooked the participants up. They were measuring heart rate, blood pressure and many other like responses. No change happen regardless of the approach. Get excited, calm down. I'm anxious. Control groups, the heart rates remained the same. Saves everything in the body is still happening regardless of what you're doing. So like we'll telling people to calm down. Number one, does it work? But number two, it didn't change the heart rate at all. None of the approaches change the physiology. So there's nothing you can do to change the physiological risk really hard. Yeah. But you can change sort of what's happening between your ears, the interpretation of the feeling. Okay. And that is what can impact our performance.

Speaker 6:

Yeah. No, it's not just like this is not harmful. This is actually adaptive. And so it's more like getting people to understand that like it was adaptive empathic responses. That is a stress response. Like near Heart's beating faster. It's getting blood to your brain. That's nice. That's really nice. That was a good thing.

Speaker 1:

This isn't a magic pill. It's not a silver bullet. It's not like we can just say, I'm excited and then all of a sudden be graded singing, don't stop believing on character can sing better than you're capable of. Yeah, exactly. And I think the point here is that this helps us realize our full potential. It's not, it's not like giving us a super, it's not enhancing. Yeah. This is not irrational confidence where it's like, oh, everything is great, but reappraisal is just simply understanding that it's useful.

Speaker 5:

Oh, perfect world. We've tried them enough that they're feeling the butterflies and saying, this is awesome. This means my body is actually prepping for this moment and their hands are shaking a little bit and instead of turning them insists, they're saying, okay, like the adrenaline is flowing and this is kind of a liquid aggression. It's going to help me go get something. Um, and there's is there enjoying the intensity. They're able to notice. It's a big moment for their body except that and step into it

Speaker 1:

and it doesn't always feel good, but we can change the way we interpret that response and that will help us perform better.

Speaker 6:

Instead of you can teach people and give them the tools to adapt more adaptable, be responded one special situation, they can kind of take that with them and apply it to other situations.

Speaker 3:

The fascinating thing about this research is that it works in so many different arenas, like this is an important information for a fourth grader before the spelling me. This is important for the professional before the job interview and not only is it useful for the individual, it's incredibly useful for the leader because we can impact the way that our people are appraising their response and in turn the way they perform.

Speaker 1:

I'm a basketball coach, five seconds left in the game, down one call, a timeout, big moment, big moment. What we feel like the right thing to do is to tell everyone and ourselves to sort of calm down in that moment. Yeah, that's what most people would do, but again, the problem there that's essentially going to lead just trying to suppress it, which doesn't work, right? If were to use some of these tactics and work to reappraise that feeling, it might look something like this, we're in the huddle, we stand up and smile and say, wow, I'm feeling it right now and I you do too. That means we care and that means this moment matters. This is our body prepping itself for this big moment. We don't know what's going to happen, but let's go let it rip. We owned it, we reappraised it reminded our players like, Hey, we've normalized it. I'm feeling it too and we help them reappraise this and then go put their best foot forward. It doesn't guarantee we're going to win the game, but it's more effective than trying to hold these feelings

Speaker 3:

down. The big idea here is before a big performance test presentation, whatever, right? We're going to feel a certain type of way. There's not much we can do to change how that feel. Everybody's going to do whatever it's going to do, but there's a lot we can do as far as how we interpret that and like what we do with those things. It is human to feel how you're feeling like that. That is a human response before a big moment and that response is useful. It's helping us, those feelings that I'm having, that's my body preparing for this performance and I should embrace those things. Absolutely and realize that it's useful for my body to do this and it's going to help me. Yes. When we try to suppress it gets worse. Performance goes down. When we reappraise it and understand this is good, it helps us perform at our best and that goes across the board regardless of the activity, the age group, and this is such a tangible thing we can all use. Now it's time for Jack to give us some questions

Speaker 1:

after the desirable difficulties. Episode number, what? Two? Yep. Two we've received a lot of questions about sort of like, okay, where when can you make practice more random as opposed to block and like do we need to teach the fundamentals first and then make it random? And our answer is like we can do those at the same time, right? Like random doesn't necessarily mean we're like forcing someone to do something that's way too difficult. It's, we can learn the technique of shooting a basketball from close in on a short rim and at the same time that we're focusing on perfecting that technique, they can move a couple of feet in and out to the left to the right, right. You can do them both at this and that small movement interrupts the pattern and we'll help them create a new opportunity to read, plan and then shoot the shot. Now we're not saying they need to be shooting three pointers or just play two on two and they'll figure it out. It's like, no, we can focus on the technique and make it a little more random. At the same time, a conversation I had with a major league baseball team, we were like, okay, how could we take some of these elements? And if the goal was to create, um, a really good hitter at a young age, what would we do? I think one is we would spend very little time hitting off a tee. We would get like a bigger ball, like a dodge ball type thing when they're real young and we can practice by throwing that at them. So what they're doing, even if the kid is like four years old, the kids getting good at hitting a ball thrown at them and just the nature of me throwing it, that's going to create the variation. So there's this sort of learning the mechanics while still introducing exactly and they're going to be successful. They're going to hit the ball right and like maybe when they start it's a beach ball like a big old thing, but they're getting good at, there's a thing flying at me and I'm in a swing at the right time and place to hit that thing. We're not saying throw from 60 feet away, throw him a fastball with a baseball, but it's just being specific on the skill we're developing and like that's a great way they're going to, that's more fun than hitting off a tee. Right? They're going to be successful. They're learning the swing mechanics and hitting a moving target and obviously as they get better, you move back strength the ball, and that's how I would do it. Like of course there might be a time and a place to hit some off a tee if we wanted to work on a specific thing, but I would spend the majority of my time hitting balls that are thrown at me and one, one distinction I would be clear on is we're trying to become a better hitter, not just a really good swinger. There's a difference between those two things. They're not the same thing. You can have a technically beautiful swing, but if we're not good at the reading and planning and being in the right place at the right time, hitting the moving target, we're not a good hitter. Now, a good hitter certainly has a nice swing, but again, it's about practicing these two things at the same time in order to become a good hitter. Couple of things before we let you guys go. Don't forget about the question. Hotline(805) 635-8459 that stands for ugly. Another thing we can use that. Number four is any episodes suggestions that you have. Um, we have a few topics that we're kind of digging into, but we would love to hear from you as well. Any, any questions? We love turning those questions into podcast ideas. Sometimes we've done that. A couple of these questions have turned into episodes, so any questions, any suggestions, any feedback that numbers open, use it however you'd like. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back next Tuesday.