A new study conducted at the University of Waterloo has determined that manageable levels of anxiety can actually help your ability to remember details of events. It was also found that when anxiety levels increase to an unmanageable level or when anxiety turns into fear, it could lead to people remembering primarily what is associated with the negative mood state. Also, they are likely to interpret neutral aspects of their experiences as being associated with the anxiety or fear as well as with thoughts, beliefs and interpretations related to their high anxiety level.
The study showed that participants who were high in anxiety displayed a heightened sensitivity to the effects of emotional context on their memory. Neutral details were interpreted according to the emotion experienced while encoding the information. This means that thinking about highly emotional events or negative events could cause you to develop a negative mindset that alters the way you perceive your environment.
It is important for us to be aware of how our mood states might be affecting how we view and interact with the world. This may not be possible to do when in the actual mood state. Instead, trying to think about this relationship when not in the fearful or anxious state of mind might better enable us to see how our views were changed when experiencing the negative mood and better understand the connection. The more we are aware of this relationship the better we will be at perceiving it during negative mood states as well.
The ability to manage your anxiety however, can lead to positive outcomes. When we perceive our anxiety as controllable we do not experience it as severely as when we believe it to be out of our control. When it is manageable it doesn’t become the primary focus of our lives because we know we can always do something about it should it become necessary.
Unmanageable or uncontrollable anxiety, on the other hand, leads to distress and a constant focus on the mood state since we feel overwhelmed by the anxiety and constantly worry it will get worse. This attention to the anxiety makes it the center of our world and thus, everything becomes colored by it. The moral of this study is that it is important to work on learning as many coping strategies for managing anxiety as possible. While we can’t get rid of all the anxiety and stress in our world, by learning how to control it and decrease it, we will be more likely to experience the positive effects of anxiety on our memory.
It is also important for educator to be aware that there could be anxiety related factors that influence student ability to remember the material they are being taught. Lightening the mood while teaching could be beneficial for students, especially those who experience high levels of school and performance related anxiety.
References
Lee, C., & Fernandes, M., (2017).. Emotional Encoding Context Leads to Memory Bias in Individuals with High Anxiety. Brain Sciences, 8 (2): 6 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci8010006
