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[Date] March 23, 2012 [Presenter] Alison W. Brooks [Title] 
I am excited! Shifting pre-performance arousal from anxiety to excitement (may help you become the next American Idol) Anxiety is pervasive in the workplace (Pilot Study A). People believe the best way to cope with anxiety is to try to “calm down” (Pilot Study B). However, across seven lab studies and one archival field study, I find that conventional wisdom is wrong. In the face of anxiety-inducing tasks, trying to “calm down” does not decrease physiological arousal (Study 1). Instead of trying to calm down, it is easy to appraise high arousal as excitement instead of anxiety (Study 2). One way that individuals shift their experiences of anxiety and excitement is by making a minimal statement (e.g., saying “I am excited”), which influences the subjective experience of emotion (Study 3) and subsequent performance. Compared to stating “I am anxious” or nothing, stating “I am excited” improved performance in an anxiety-inducing domain: karaoke singing (Study 4). This result holds in an archival field study of the popular television show, “American Idol” (Study 5).
Seminars / Conferences - Operations, Information, and Decisions
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