The Impact of Confidence on Anxiety and Motivation
(cover photo by The Digital Artist on Pixabay)
by Cindy Nebel
How do people perform under pressure? As performance-related anxiety increases, what happens to performance? There are lots of different theories about the impact of anxiety on motivation. Previously, we have discussed the Yerkes-Dodson “Law”, wherein it is hypothesized that a little bit of pressure can be motivating, but too much pressure can then decrease performance. This feels right, but the data doesn’t really support this view. Still, you can probably think of people who perform well under pressure and those that “choke”. You might even be able to think of times when you, yourself, did well when under pressure and times when that pressure was all too much. What’s the difference? When is performance-related anxiety good for you and when is it not?
This was the focus of a recently published experiment. In this study, the researchers proposed that the difference between whether pressure is good or bad is how it is interpreted. If you are nervous because you feel ill-prepared or otherwise have low confidence in your abilities, then that anxiety might be a signal to you that you are really not prepared. If, on the other hand, you have pretty high confidence in your abilities, but this is a high stakes situation, that anxiety might be interpreted as motivating. In this study, they held everything constant and just influenced self-confidence. That is, if we hold actual ability equal, can we see a difference in that feeling of anxiety based just on perception of ability?
Study Procedures
Participants first completed tests to look at their baseline anxiety, motivation, working memory, verbal reasoning, and science reasoning. Then came the fun part. Participants were told that on the next task they needed to perform above 90% in order to get a reward both for themselves as well as their partner and then they completed working memory and verbal and science reasoning tasks again, being reminded of their need to score well in order to get the reward for themselves and their peer.
Now that all participants were feeling pressure to perform well, the researchers manipulated their confidence. Half of the participants were told that they were performing around the 90th percentile without actually telling them how well they were doing. The other half of the participants were told that they were performing around the 30th percentile. Again, neither group actually knew their raw percent, just that relative to other students doing this task, they were doing better or worse than most. They didn’t know how this might translate to whether or not they would get the reward and again, this was regardless of their actual performance.
Image by manfredsteger on Pixabay
Participants received feedback about their percentile after every task they did. After receiving all of the tasks, they were again assessed on their anxiety and motivation as well as their perception of their performance.
Results
Despite receiving varied feedback, there were no actual performance differences on any of the tasks. However, there were differences for perceived performance. Across all tasks, participants who received negative feedback thought they did much worse than those who received positive feedback. That’s probably not all that surprising. Being told you’re doing well makes you believe you’re doing well and vice versa. However, in addition to perceived performance, getting negative feedback also significantly increased anxiety, reduced intrinsic motivation, and increased amotivation compared to positive feedback . Those participants with higher anxiety had lower perceived performance as well.
Takeaway
These results indicate that your belief in your success on a task impacts your level of anxiety and motivation more so than your actual success! If you perceive yourself as doing poorly, it may cause you to pay more attention to your current state, feelings, and performance, and draw attention away from the task at hand.
In this study, that anxiety didn’t impact performance, but in real world situations it might. The stakes here involved maybe earning $5 for you and a peer… not terribly high stakes. But prior research has shown the impact of anxiety on performance when individuals are under pressure and there are some real world circumstances in which this might really matter.
One example that is relevant in my world is student performance on practice medical board exams. Students often want to know the median score for their class. They want to know how they are performing compared to their peers. As of right now, we do not disclose this information, stating that the purpose of these tests is to know whether you are on track to passing, not whether you are ahead of the game. These data make me even more confident in that decision. I don’t want to tell a student who is doing just fine that they are in the 30th percentile. That will increase their anxiety and reduce their motivation, which may lead to very real performance differences on the real exam, where the stakes are tremendously high.
As an educator, this indicates that student self-efficacy matters. Possibly more than their actual performance, students need to believe that they are capable and the way we provide feedback is a major contributor to that belief.
Reference:
Mesghina, A., Au Yeung, N., & Richland, L. E. (2025). Uncertainty and perceptions of competence under pressure: Affective and motivational consequences of relative feedback during cognitive performance. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.
