Last fall, motivational speaker Pancho Campo presented a seminar on managing stress and maintaining motivation here at Broward College. One idea that I found fascinating, was the idea that maintaining rituals can help with performance anxiety. And what is test anxiety? Performance anxiety. Pancho’s has worked extensively with professional athletes and he is not the only person to suggest that we can use the same techniques as athletes to handle the anxiety that some people face with test-taking.
Tarrant, Leathem, and Flett (2010) suggest that the feelings some students have when faced with an exam are the same as those faced by athletes before a sporting event. In fact, Tarrant et al. (2010) give the example of a professional tennis player who lost a high-stakes match and then reported that she felt overwhelmed with the importance of the event and this feeling got in the way of her ability to play. So many times, I talk to students who describe similar experiences of feeling overwhelmed with the importance of a test and how this blocked their ability to concentrate on a test, even when they felt confident about the material over which they were being tested.
There are many strategies a student can employ to deal with test anxiety. One strategy that Pancho Campo presented is the idea that rituals can help us overcome stressful situations and performance anxiety. He showed video examples of athletes and their rituals, specifically tennis players. Having accompanied my tennis-loving in-laws to the Miami Open for many years, I’m familiar with some of the rituals tennis players use – bouncing the ball a specific number of times, flipping over the racket in a certain sequence, making the same vocalization with each time they hit the ball. Athletes often rely on rituals to help them focus and be successful.
Brooks (2017) looked specifically at how rituals can help improve performance on exams and found that those who participated in rituals did better on the test. The interesting thing there was that Brooks (2017) determined the ritual, and it had no specific personal connection to the participants, it was a ritual thought up by the researcher.
So, what’s the takeaway here? If you have test anxiety, develop a ritual. Feel free to borrow my sister’s ritual of eating a York Peppermint Pattie and doing ten jumping jacks before a test, or develop your own. Brooks (2017) had participants draw on a piece of paper, pour salt on the drawing, and then crumple up the paper and throw it away. I think the point is not what the actual ritual is, but that you develop a ritual and can count on that ritual in times of stress and anxiety to help you get centered and feel less overwhelmed.
What are some of your rituals?
References (in case you scholars want to look them up):
Brooks, A. W. (2017). Research: Performing a Ritual Before a Stressful Task Improves Performance. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2.
Tarrant, R., Janet Leathem, & Flett, R. (2010). What have Sport and Music Performance Taught Us about Test Anxiety? Psychology Journal, 7(2), 67–77.