People can use anxiety to motivate themselves, study finds

 A high-stress environment may be a boon rather than a bane for some. According to new research published in the Journal of Individual Differences, some anxious individuals can use that experience to motivate themselves.

Past  research has found that anxiety can harm concentration and memory. But  the new study suggests that the way people experience and respond to  anxiety influences their academic and job performance.

 

“I  have the impression that much of the research in the psychology  literature focuses on hedonic emotion regulation, in other words, when  people strive to be happy,” said the study’s corresponding author,  Juliane Strack of Strandklinik St. Peter-Ording. “However, I observed  that there are situations where people seem to thrive on stress —  situations that tend to evoke negative emotions such as anxiety or  anger. That led me to look into the concept of instrumental emotion  regulation (when we maintain or strive for emotions that help us to  attain goals; these emotions can be negative, such as anxiety in  dangerous situations) as well as eustress (positive stress).”

The  three-part study investigated the tendency to use anxiety for  self-motivation by surveying 194 German adults, 159 undergraduate  students in Poland, and 270 journalists in Germany. People who score  higher on measures of anxiety motivation tend to agree with statements  such as “feeling anxious about a deadline helps me to get the work done  on time” and “feeling anxious about my goals keeps me focused on them.”

The  researchers found anxious students with higher anxiety motivation  tended to have better grades than anxious students with lower anxiety  motivation. Likewise, anxious journalists with higher anxiety motivation  tended to report higher job satisfaction than anxious journalists with  lower anxiety motivation. This was particularly true among individuals  who were clear about their feelings.

In other words, the typical  association between anxiety and negative outcomes appeared to be  disrupted among those with higher levels of anxiety motivation. “Using  anxiety as a source of motivation seems to offset the otherwise  detrimental effects of anxiety,” Strack and her colleagues wrote in  their study.

“I hope that people can understand the positive sides  of negative emotions, in particular anxiety, which many people try to  suppress or avoid,” Strack told PsyPost. “We see in these studies that  anxiety can actually provide us with a lot of energy and focus. In other  words, some people use anxiety to motivate themselves, which we label  as ‘anxiety motivation’.”

The study had some limitations. “As the  studies rely on self-report, future research may benefit from exploring  the concept of anxiety motivation in the context of performance ratings  or other types of objective indicators for motivation and/or  performance,” Strack explained.

The study also used a cross-sectional methodology, preventing the researchers from drawing inferences about cause-and-effect.“

In  other studies we have further looked into the concept of anxiety  motivation, and found that people differ in how they use anxiety to  motivate themselves: some use the energy that anxiety can provide, while  others use the information value that anxiety can provide (emotions  serve as a feedback system that helps us monitor goal progress; for  example anxiety can signal that our goals are threatened),” Strack  added.

“Furthermore, anxiety motivation can buffer some of the  negative consequences of stressful situations: in experimental settings  as well as longitudinal studies we observed that anxiety motivation can  protect against emotional exhaustion, as well as helping people to  appraise stressors as positive challenges, rather than threatening  problems.”

The study, “Must We Suffer to Succeed? When Anxiety Boosts Motivation and Performance“, was also co-authored by Paulo Lopes, Francisco Esteves, and Pablo Fernandez-Berrocal. It was published online May 24, 2017. 

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