VIDEOS
PODCASTS
How can we be better at time management? on Connections with Evan Dawson
Click here to listen on WXXI news
The Science of Being Better When You're Nervous with Ceci Clark and Jeremy Jamieson
Click here to listen on iTunes
Can stress be a "good" thing? on Connections with Evan Dawson
Click here to listen on WXXI AM news
Stress Optimization, Resilience and Mindset Shifts with Dr. Jeremy Jamieson on the Being with Purpose podcast with Lori Webster
Click here to listen on iTunes
An interview with André Sturesson on his Health Psychology and Human Nature podcast
Click here to listen on iTunes
Click here to listen on Spotify
How the type A brain thrives on stress and how you can too
Click here to listen on Headspace
Why Do We Buy Things We’ll Never Use? Also: How is social media like a knife?
Click here to listen on Freakonomics
ARTICLES
There are two types of people: those who love nothing more than to be asked, “Hey, can you jump on a quick call?”, and those who would rather give themselves carpal tunnel than start dialing. According to a 2019 U.K. study of office workers, the latter group has only grown in recent years; the study found that 76 percent of the millennials surveyed experience phone anxiety, compared to 40 percent of the baby boomers...
NY Magazine
Psychologists Explain Your Phone Anxiety (and How to Get Over It)
________________________________________________________________________________
Everybody is familiar with the negative consequences of experiencing too much stress in daily life, from feeling "burnt out," choking under pressure, to frequent illnesses. Contrary to common beliefs, though, not all stress is bad for you. In fact, without experiencing stress people would not leave the safety of their comfort zones, thus abandoning goals and limiting innovation...
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Optimizing Stress to Fuel Success
________________________________________________________________________________
. . . a survey by the American Psychological Association found that demand for psychotherapy had increased dramatically since the start of the Covid pandemic, with 68% of therapists reporting that their wait lists had grown and more than 40% saying that they were unable to keep up with demand. But help doesn’t have to mean long years of traditional psychotherapy. Research has shown that even brief interventions—targeted, time-limited programs to improve thinking and behavior at critical moments—can have significant benefits.
After a single meeting, people reported that their feelings of hopelessness and anxiety improved significantly.
The Wall Street Journal
The Power of Brief Mental Health Therapies
________________________________________________________________________________
The researchers used a 30-minute online training session to teach participants about a mindset that sees stress as an opportunity to learn and interprets the body’s responses to stress, like a racing heart, as potentially helpful instead of debilitating. They found that this had powerful effects on mental health and physiological responses to stress after only one session.
VICE
A Better Way to Think of Stress, According to Science
________________________________________________________________________________
Nobody wants to be stressed. Yet as much as we try to avoid it, some stress can be good for you. Really. “Some of our most meaningful experiences involve stress, be it excelling at work or school, maintaining relationships, or raising children,” says Jeremy P. Jamieson, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “When people reflect on the times in their lives when they have learned, grown substantially, or performed at exceptionally high levels, they often report those times having been deeply stressful.”
Fitbit
The Upside of Stress
________________________________________________________________________________
The mental health crisis among teens has prompted an urgent quest for preventive interventions. Researchers believe they have one. As the team explains in a recent study, the 30-minute online training module teaches teenagers to channel their stress responses away from something negative that needs to be feared and tamped down towards recognizing those responses -- sweaty palms, a racing heart, for example -- as a positive driving force.
ScienceDaily
Helping teens channel stress, grow in resilience
________________________________________________________________________________
Psychologists develop a tool to help teens turn everyday stressors that could lead to anxiety and depression into a positive force instead.
University of Rochester News
Helping teens channel stress, grow in resilience
________________________________________________________________________________
Right now, anxiety is the last thing people want to feel. Not only is it a deeply unpleasant emotion to experience, but it can also bring debilitating cycles of worry and hasty, unfortunate decisions. Why add that to all the covid-19 stress we’re already dealing with? No surprise then that the United Nations and world leaders from New Zealand to Norway are speaking out in efforts to quell public anxieties about the pandemic and address the mental health toll of the virus, in addition to the physical one.
Yet, anxiety might not be all bad for us today...
The Washington Post
The anxiety you’re feeling over covid-19 can be a good thing
________________________________________________________________________________
In some ways, today's world is more stressful than ever. Studies have backed up the idea that more Americans are worried, anxious, and, well — stressed. But not everyone copes with stress in the same way. Some people perform well under pressure, not just dealing with whatever's bugging them but excelling. Other people essentially curl into a ball.
To understand the differences in stress response, BrainFacts.org spoke with Jeremy Jamieson, a social psychophysiologist who studies responses to stress at the University of Rochester.
BrainFacts.org
What Is Stress Resilience and Can It Be Learned?
________________________________________________________________________________
. . . a burgeoning scientific literature suggests that, when it comes to high-pressure, high-stakes task, trying to stay calm probably isn’t the best approach. In fact, it’s more likely to trip you up than to help you. It’s better, this research argues, to embrace your anxiety, but to reframe how to look at it — to take it as a sign that your body is getting ready to help you perform at the highest level.
The Economist
What Makes Us Stronger
________________________________________________________________________________
Adolescence is a time of growth, and is particularly formative for personality – we learn about who we are and what we’re good at. This isn’t always a positive experience – as the researchers note in the very first line: “negative social evaluations are ubiquitous during adolescence” – which can shape the adolescent’s self-perception. This is reacted to by the research, that uses a psychological intervention to ultimately improve the participant’s stress appraisals, cardiovascular response (as measured by electrocardiography, or ECG), and improve their performance in a stressful task. This means that the changes that happen can move from the negative, to positive.
iMotions
The 10 Best Articles of the Year in Human Behavior Research
________________________________________________________________________________
A Rochester University study took students with social anxiety and set them up to give a speech in front of judges. The group primed to reframe their stress as the body’s way of “preparing for battle” performed much better than those who did not. Lead author of the study, professor Jeremy Jamieson noted, “Our experience of acute or short-term stress is shaped by how we interpret physical cues.”
HuffPost
4 Ways Stress Can Help You Perform Better
________________________________________________________________________________
To perform under pressure, research finds that welcoming anxiety is more helpful than calming down.. Imagine that you work for an organization with hundreds of employees and you're about to give a presentation to the entire group. The CEO and all the board members are in the audience....Your heart is pounding, your palms are sweating, your mouth is dry..Should you try to calm down or try to feel excited?
The Wall Street Journal
Use Stress to Your Advantage
________________________________________________________________________________
It may be difficult to believe, as Jamieson advises, that stress can benefit your performance...Rodriguez had never heard of Jeremy Jamieson. He had never read, or ever been told, that intense stress could be harnessed to perform his best. But he understood it and drew strength from it. In the middle of his downward spiral of panic, he realized something: “I’m in a competition. This is a competition. I’ve got to beat them.”
The New York Times Magazine
Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?
________________________________________________________________________________
Jamieson concluded that reframing anxiety as a surmountable hurdle can improve attention, counter the negative biological effects of stress, and boost performance. “Your own perceptions matter quite a bit for biological function,” he said.
The Boston Globe
How to Make Stress Work for You
________________________________________________________________________________
An academic-performance study, meanwhile, suggested that giving precompetition stress a positive spin not only protects us from choking under pressure but could actually give us a competitive edge. In an experiment by psychologists Jeremy Jamieson, Wendy Mendes and others...
The Boston Globe
How to Make Stress Work in Your Favor