Writing down fears may curb test-taking anxiety

Instead of stressing before a test, take pen to paper and write down your concerns, a recent University of Chicago study suggests.

The study found that students who were anxious about exams performed better after they were given 10 minutes to write down their test-related concerns.

Penn Psychology professor Dianne Chambless suggests that generating such a list of worries before an exam can be an effective technique for dealing with test anxiety.

“Putting worries into perspective by challenging how realistic the catastrophic thoughts are helps to reduce anxiety,” Chambless wrote in an e-mail. “Much of the time if a person writes the thoughts down … he [or] she sees how exaggerated they are and automatically moves to the step of putting things back into proper perspective, particularly when the anxiety is relatively mild.”

Associate professor of Psychology Sian Beilock and graduate student Gerardo Ramirez, an Institute of Education Sciences pre-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, conducted the study.

According to a University of Chicago press release, the writing exercise allowed students to unload their anxieties before taking exams and accordingly freed up brainpower needed to perform well on the test. In prior research, Beilock also indicated that pressure-filled situations can exhaust part of the brain’s working memory, which allows individuals to draw on knowledge relevant to the task at hand.

When worries are brought to the forefront of the mind, they can cause the working memory to become overburdened, the press release noted. Writing down worries about an exam can free up the working memory and allow students to feel more at ease.

“In general, making worries concrete, focusing on aspects of problems over which we have some control, and taking specific steps to reduce the likelihood of a bad outcome is likely to be more constructive than worrying,” Psychology professor Ayelet Ruscio wrote in an e-mail. Ruscio further explained that writing down concerns is an effective method of making them concrete.

Myrna Cohen, executive director of the Weingarten Learning Resources Center, also believed that the study’s findings present a viable option for dealing with stress surrounding tests.

“Writing about test concerns is a way to express worries and, hopefully, put the concerns on paper and out of your head,” Cohen wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t think that this alone can eliminate test anxiety, but could be part of an overall healthy approach to learning that includes getting enough sleep and keeping up with assignments from class to class.”

Some Penn students also seemed enthusiastic about the study’s conclusion.

“Sometimes when I think about things in my head, my thoughts get out of proportion,” College freshman Sarah Murphy said. “I think writing them down would show how ridiculous they are.” Murphy added that she would be willing to try out the technique before her next exam.

In reference to the study’s suggested test-tackling tactic, Wharton freshman Alice Liu said, “I would totally do that. I think it’s something that could be helpful for more than just test-taking, like writing down things that stress you out before you go to bed.”

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