Stress and confidence

Stress Influences Confidence, Can Lead to Inequalities

A new study looks at the way in which stress influences our confidence in competing with others.

European scientists say the behavioral investigation is the first to show how stress actually affects our degree of confidence. They believe stress can even be a cause of social inequality, rather than just a consequence of it.

The study is published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Confidence is essential to our ability to compete in society; when we don’t feel confident, we are less likely to make the kind of decisions that can give us a financial and social edge over others.

By driving social competition, confidence becomes central in the organization and function of human societies, and marks the way individuals interact with each other.

At the same time, little is known about what influences people’s confidence. Two major factors seem to be stress and the person’s general anxiety.

Technically, this is referred to as “trait anxiety,” and it describes how prone a person is to see the world as threatening and worrisome. The question, however, is how stress and trait anxiety impact an individual’s confidence in a competitive context.

Research teams have now shown that stress can actually boost the competing confidence of people with low trait anxiety, but significantly reduce it in people with high trait anxiety.

The scientists designed an experiment which began with more than two hundred people taking two online tests: one to assess their IQ, and one to measure their trait anxiety.

A week later, about half of the study’s participants underwent a standard psychological procedure (called TSST-G) designed to cause acute social stress, such as going through a mock job interview and performing mental arithmetic tasks before an impassive audience.

The other half of the participants formed the control group, and did not undergo the stress-inducing procedure.

All participants, stressed and non-stressed, were then given two options in a game where they could win money: they could either take their chances in a lottery, or they could use their IQ score to compete with that of another, unknown participant’s; the one with the higher IQ score would be the winner.

In the non-stressed, control group, nearly 60 percent of participants chose the IQ score competition over the lottery, showing overall high confidence in the participants, regardless of their trait anxiety scores.

But in the group that experienced stress before the money game, things were different.

The competitive confidence of participants varied depending on their trait anxiety scores. In people with very low anxiety, stress actually increased their competitive confidence compared to their unstressed counterparts; in highly anxious individuals, it dropped.

The findings suggest that stress is a force that influences a person’s competitive confidence.

Stress, it seems, can raise or suppress an individual’s confidence depending on their predisposition to anxiety.

The researchers also found that the effects of stress on the participants’ confidence were reduced by the hormone cortisol, which is normally released from the adrenal glands in response to stress.

The team examined saliva samples from the stressed participants for the presence of cortisol. In people with low anxiety, those that showed higher confidence also showed a higher cortisol response to stress.

But in highly anxious people, high cortisol levels were associated with lower confidence, which connects the behavioral effects of stress to a biological mechanism.

The findings of this behavioral experiment can be seen as a simulation of confidence in social competition and the way it relates to socioeconomic inequality.

Studies have shown that, in areas with wide socioeconomic inequality (e.g. a wide rich-poor gap), people on the low end of the social ladder often experience high levels of stress as a consequence.

“People often interpret self-confidence as competence,” said Carmen Sandi, Ph. D., principal investigator.

“So if the stress of, say, a job interview, makes a person over-confident, they will be more likely to be hired — even though they might not be more competent than other candidates. This would be the case for people with low anxiety.”

Investigators believe stress is a product of competitive inequality and is also a direct cause of disparities.

In other words, stress can become a major obstacle in overcoming socioeconomic inequality by trapping highly anxious individuals in a self-perpetuating loop of low competitive confidence.

Although there is much yet to be learned in this area, Sandi believes that it can change the way we look at social dynamics as a whole.

“Stress is an important engine of social evolution,” she says. “It affects the individual, and by extension society as whole.”

Source: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne/EurekAlert

Stress pulls us apart: anxiety leads to differences in competitive confidence under stress

Randomized Controlled Trial

. 2015 Apr;54:115-23.

doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.01.019. Epub 2015 Feb 19.

Lorenz Goette¹, Samuel Bendahan², John Thoresen², Fiona Hollis², Carmen Sandi³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne (UNIL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
² Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
³ Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: [email protected].

PMID: 25705012
DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.01.019

Free article

Randomized Controlled Trial

Lorenz Goette et al. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2015 Apr.

Free article

. 2015 Apr;54:115-23.

doi: 10. 1016/j.psyneuen.2015.01.019. Epub 2015 Feb 19.

Authors

Lorenz Goette¹, Samuel Bendahan², John Thoresen², Fiona Hollis², Carmen Sandi³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne (UNIL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
² Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
³ Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics, Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: [email protected].

PMID: 25705012
DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2015.01.019

Abstract

Social competition is a fundamental mechanism of evolution and plays a central role in structuring individual interactions and communities. Little is known about the factors that affect individuals' competitive success, particularly in humans. Key factors might include stress, a major evolutionary pressure that can affect the establishment of social hierarchies in animals, and individuals' trait anxiety, which largely determines susceptibility to stress and constitutes an important determinant of differences in competitive outcomes. Using an economic-choice experiment to assess competitive self-confidence in 229 human subjects we found that, whereas competitive self-confidence is unaffected by an individual's anxiety level in control conditions, exposure to the Trier social stress test for groups drives the behavior of individuals apart: low-anxiety individuals become overconfident, and high-anxiety individuals become underconfident. Cortisol responses to stress were found to relate to self-confidence, with the direction of the effects depending on trait anxiety. Our findings identify stress as a major regulator of individuals' competitiveness, affecting self-confidence in opposite directions in high and low anxious individuals. Therefore, our findings imply that stress may provide a new channel for generating social and economic inequality and, thus, not only be a consequence, but also a cause of inequality through its impact on competitive self-confidence and decision making in financially-relevant situations.

Keywords: Anxiety; Competition; Cortisol; Economic inequality; Self-confidence; Stress.

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Publication types

MeSH terms

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Levada-Center: Society under stress

At the end of September, against the background of the announced partial mobilization, the public mood deteriorated sharply. Tension, irritation, fear and longing have grown. There has never been such a sharp decline in the entire observation period. At the same time, half of the respondents demonstrate confidence in the future. Two-thirds of the respondents feel they are free people.

In September, the Russian society experienced the strongest stress from the news about the partial mobilization. There was a sharp deterioration in mood. The number of those who talk about “excellent mood” has decreased to 7% (from 15% in July), about “normal even condition” to 45% (from 65% in July). The number of those who speak of “tension and irritation” (from 17% to 32%) and “fear and longing” (from 4% to 15%) has increased. There has never been such a sharp one-time deterioration in mood during the entire period of observation. As a result, positive moods at the end of September only slightly prevailed over negative ones, a similar ratio was last observed in 2000.

April Jul, Aug. November Jul, 9001 November November 900 Mar. 9001 Jun. 12 April April June 9001 Dec.18 Jul.19 okt.19 Jan.21 9001 5 4 4 014 013 37 014 53 42 29 5 6 5 014 4

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Great mood	5	6	6	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	4	3	3	4	3	3	4	2	3	4	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	4	4	3	3	3	4	5	3	4	4		3	3	3	4	5	4	4	5	5	5	6	5	5	7	5	7	7	7	6	7	6	8	7	6	8	6	10	7	9	7	6	8	6	8	9	6	6	8	7	7	9		7		8	10	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	11	10	10	12	12	10	7	8	9	7	10	8	11	10	11	9	10	7	9	11	11	8	8	12	11	12	11	14	13	12	13	12	13	14	13	14	11	10	10	13	13	14			10	10	13	14	13	12	13	13	12	11	11	110014	13	14	12	12	12	12	12	13	14	13	13	11	13	14	13	13	11	11	11	13	15	7
Normal, even state	35	40	39
41	39	41	39	40	39	33	34	37	38	39	35	32	32	38	38	35	38	31	31	40	41	38	35	35	33	41
36	39	24	33	33	34	36	34	37	40	45	46	50	45	40	43	49	49	48	47	50	50	50		52	50
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I experience voltage, irritation	43	39	37	39	41	40	39	42	40	41 41 41 913 41 913 41 913 41 913 41 913 41 41 41 410014	45	40	41	37	39	40	46	43	41	40	40	42	42	45	35	38	39	42	40	45	42	38	39	39	42	41	41	48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 48 480013 42	39	45	40	39	33	35	30	34	39	36	32	32	32	33	31	32	30	30	29	28	32	28	28	28	28	26	26	26	26	26	26	28	32	32	27	32	27	24	28	28	26	29	25	25	28	25	27	28	24	24	25	27	23	22	24	27	25	23	23	26 26	26	26	26	26	26	26	260013 26	22	23	24	25	23	22	22	22	19	18	19	23	24	24	23	20	23	22	19	19	18	17	19	24	25	22	19	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20									200014	24	20	22	21	24	20	20	17	17	19	16	18	25	21	22	24	21	20	19	19	17	20	17	21	23	21	21	18	23	20	23	13	10	12	13	8	14	10	12	8	7	11	12	12	11	10	9	10	11	10	12	9	20	13	13	14	11	11	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	100014	8	9	9	8	8	6	6	7	7	10	8	7	7	7	7	6	8	8	8	6	6	5	6	5	7	9	7	7	6	8	7	6	6	6	6	5	6	6	6	6	6	7	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	5	6	4	6	5	4	5	5	5	5	3	4	3	5	3	3	3	3	5	5	3	5	4	4	4	1	3	3	4	6	6	3	3	4	4	6	5	4	4	3	4	4	4	2	4	5	5	6	5	4	4	5	4	5	5	5 900	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	7	5	4	4	5	7	6	7	7	4
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9000

On an excellent or normal state, Object 18-24%) , those who can afford durable goods (60%) and who believe that things are going in the right direction in the country (63%). More negative assessments of their own mood are characteristic of respondents over 40 years old (about 50%), those who barely have enough money for food and who have enough money for clothes (also about 50%), and respondents who believe that the country is moving on the wrong path (69%).

On the question of whether the respondents feel confident in the future, opinions were equally divided. It should be noted that this question was last asked two years ago and does not show the changes that may have taken place in recent months.

Jun 04 9001 December December AU.20 20013 32

Jan.95

January

Jan.97

Feb.00

Sep

Mar.06

Jun.06

September

Jan.13

Mar.13

Jun.13

Sep.1

Nov.14

Jan.15

Jul.15

Dec.15

Jan.16

Aug. 16

Jan.17

Jul.17

Jul.

Aug.19

Sep.22

and

250014

0014

210005

Respondents who do not feel so confident dominate those who think the country is on the wrong track, who disapprove of the president's activities, and who barely have enough to eat. In these groups, the proportion of respondents who do not feel confident is 81%, 88% and 64%, respectively.

Two-thirds of respondents (69%) of respondents say that they feel they are free people in our society, slightly less than a third (29%) hold the opposite opinion. It seems that this distribution is the result of the mobilization of public opinion that took place in February-March of this year.

Jun, 9014 9006%), and those who live in Moscow (49%).

The all-Russian survey of the Levada Center was conducted on September 22–28, 2022, based on a representative all-Russian sample of the urban and rural population of 1,631 people aged 18 and over in 137 settlements, 50 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The study is conducted at the respondent's home by a personal interview. The distribution of responses is given as a percentage of the total number of respondents, together with data from previous surveys.

Statistical error for a sample of 1600 people (with a probability of 0.95) does not exceed:

3.4% for indicators close to 50%

2.9% for indicators close to 25% / 75%

2.0% for indicators close to 10% / 90%

1.5% for indicators close to 5% / 95% organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent.

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How to overcome crisis stress and regain self-confidence

Crisis and other troubles are reflected in almost any of us in the form of stress. How to effectively get out of this state?

Photo: The right daily routine will save you from stress // Global Look Press

Crisis and other troubles are reflected in almost any of us in the form of stress. How to effectively get out of this state?

What is the essence of stress?

[:rsame:]

Each of us has been in a stressful situation at least once in our lives. However, not everyone can clearly explain the essence of the concept. Simply put, stress is the unwanted pressure of certain circumstances that causes negative emotions.

In a state of stress, a person experiences nervousness and inner tension. Our brain catches and fixes all these states, producing in response a powerful hormonal release of cortisol and adrenaline. This is an absolutely natural reaction of the body, developed over thousands of years.

Thus the body prepares for increased physical activity. However, at this time, for example, you are driving a car, or attending a meeting. Of course, the body in such a situation becomes confused: on the one hand, all cells are ready to run headlong to save life, on the other hand, the owner of these cells does not run anywhere.

What does the brain do then? It increases the symptoms of stress, increasing the feeling of fear. A person falls into a vicious circle in which emotions rage like the sea during a storm. How to get out of this unpleasant situation?

Restoring the rhythm of breathing

[:same:]

Stress has a noticeable effect on the rhythm of a person's breathing, which becomes more frequent. Even slight changes in breathing drag along not the best biochemical reactions in the body. As a result of hyperventilation in the lungs, a person begins to feel tingling in the toes and hands, weakness and indecision, as if the head is empty. It is for this reason that it is so important to bring the rhythm of breathing back to normal in time. This instantly helps to relieve stress and feel self-confidence.

Experts recommend using the Scan exercise. Its execution begins with a deep slow breath, during which a person “scans” his own body, focusing on muscle tension. Then you need to exhale slowly and do everything possible to relax the muscles. If the first time it was not possible to relax and bring breathing back to normal, the exercise should be repeated.

Taking regular breaks

Stress affects the body in such a way that we begin to work faster, talk, even eat. The following recommendations will allow you to start controlling time:

You must always be organized and keep every thing in its place.

Do not strictly limit yourself in terms of completing tasks, add freedom to your actions so as not to drive yourself into stress.

Try not to scatter your attention and energy on doing several tasks at the same time, allocate your time for each task.

A to-do list helps you understand what needs to be done right now and what can be left for later.

Prioritize your tasks and don't be afraid to delegate some tasks to colleagues so as not to "burn out" at work.

Learn to say “no” when necessary.

Make plans for the day, week, year.

We respect our own needs

Don't make yourself a scapegoat for someone you love. You need to be prepared for stress. Certain changes in worldview and lifestyle help to increase resistance to the blows of fate. We invite you to test the effectiveness of useful techniques in practice:

Eat regularly. Breakfast and lunch are not allowed.

Avoid caffeinated products.

Healthy sleep can work wonders. Breathing exercises and relaxation techniques can help you deal with insomnia.

Regularly engage in activities that bring you joy and satisfaction. Finding time for yourself is not selfish. The people around you will benefit more when you feel comfortable and happy.

	definitely yes + more likely yes	definitely no + rather no	I find it difficult to answer
43	9014
53	15
Feb.00	53	40	6
Feb.05	41	6

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Stress and confidence

Stress Influences Confidence, Can Lead to Inequalities

Stress pulls us apart: anxiety leads to differences in competitive confidence under stress

Affiliations

Authors

Affiliations

Abstract

Similar articles

Cited by

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

Levada-Center: Society under stress

How to overcome crisis stress and regain self-confidence