How to beat exam stress - insights from Psychology

 Published this week an interesting article on how to beat exam stress with the power of your mind
but what does psychological research say about stress ?

Matthew Owens, Jim Stevenson, Julie A. Hadwin, Roger Norgate. When does anxiety help or hinder cognitive test performance? The role of working memory capacity. British Journal of Psychology, 2012; DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12009  found that in a study of 96 school students, anxiety only had a negative effect on test results if memory was also poor.. On the contrary if memory was good, anxiety resulted in better results. .
However exam time  does often lead to poor diets.

Perceived changes in food intake in response to stress: The role of conscientiousness.
O'Connor, Daryl B. ; O'Connor, Rory C. ; Stress and Health: Journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress, 2004, Vol.20 (5), p.279-292
These results suggest that when faced with a stressful encounter,individuals who are perfectionists  may be less well equipped to cope and as a result start to eat more  high energy snacks 

Other free places where you can search for high quality psychology articles on this topic are:

On a more practical note Mind has shared 14 tips from students to beat exam stress 
Student minds have a top 5 


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