When the stakes are high, people in positions of low power may perform better by using self-affirmations to boost their confidence

"Most people have experienced a time in their lives when they aren't performing up to their potential. They take a test or have a performance review at work, but something holds them back," says lead researcher Sonia Kang, Ph.D. "Performance in these situations is closely related to how we are expected to behave." The researchers conducted three experiments to measure performance in pressure-filled situations. When participants were in a position of high power, they tended to perform better under pressure, while those with less power performed worse. Self-affirmations, however, helped to level the playing field and effectively reduced the power differences. "You should reflect on things that you know are good about yourself," says Kang, an assistant professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at the University of Toronto. "Anyone has the potential to do really well. It's how you respond under pressure that makes a key difference." In the first experiment, 134 participants (60% women) were assigned in same-sex pairs to portray a recruiter or job candidate in a competitive negotiation involving the setting of salary, vacation time and other job benefits. To increase the pressure, half of the paired participants were told the negotiation was an accurate gauge of their negotiating skills. Participants in the low-pressure situation were told the exercise would teach them negotiation concepts and was not an accurate gauge of their negotiating abilities. Job candidates, who had a lower power role, performed significantly worse in the high-stakes negotiations than those in the low-pressure group. Recruiters, who held a more powerful role, actually performed better under pressure because their initial expectations for success were magnified, Kang says. In a second experiment, 60 male MBA students were paired together as the buyer or seller of a biotechnology plant. The sellers, who were in a position of power, were more assertive under pressure and negotiated a higher selling price, while the buyers performed worse under pressure. The final experiment used the same biotechnology plant exercise with 88 MBA students (33 male pairs and 11 female pairs), but all participants were told that the exercise would gauge their negotiating skills to raise the stakes. Before the negotiation, half of the participants wrote for five minutes about their most important negotiating skill, while the remaining half wrote about their least important negotiating skill. Buyers who completed the positive self-affirmation performed significantly better in negotiating a lower sale price for the biotechnology plant, effectively reducing the power differences between the buyer and seller. Writing down a self-affirmation may be more effective than just thinking it, but both methods can help, Kang says. Before a performance review, an employee could write or think about his best job skills. Writing or thinking about one's family or other positive traits that aren't associated with the high-stakes situation also may boost confidence and performance. "Anytime you have low expectations for your performance, you tend to sink down and meet those low expectations," Kang says. "Self-affirmation is a way to neutralize that threat."

Recognizing and giving thanks for the positive aspects of life can result in improved mental, and ultimately physical, health in patients with asymptomatic heart failure

"We found that more gratitude in these patients was associated with better mood, better sleep, less fatigue and lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers related to cardiac health," said lead author Paul J. Mills, PhD, professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego. Gratitude is part of a wider outlook on life that involves noticing and appreciating the positive aspects of life. It can be attributed to an external source (e.g., a pet), another person or a non-human (e.g., God). It is also commonly an aspect of spirituality, said Mills. Because previous research has shown that people who considered themselves more spiritual had greater overall well-being, including physical health, Mills and his colleagues examined the role of both spirituality and gratitude on potential health markers in patients. The study involved 186 men and women who had been diagnosed with asymptomatic (Stage B) heart failure for at least three months. Stage B consists of patients who have developed structural heart disease (e.g., have had a heart attack that damaged the heart) but do not show symptoms of heart failure (e.g., shortness of breath or fatigue). This stage is an important therapeutic window for halting disease progression and improving quality of life since Stage B patients are at high risk of progressing to symptomatic (Stage C) heart failure, where risk of death is five times higher, according to Mills. Using standard psychological tests, the researchers obtained scores for gratitude and spiritual well-being. They then compared those scores with the patients' scores for depressive symptom severity, sleep quality, fatigue, self-efficacy (belief in one's ability to deal with a situation) and inflammatory markers. They found higher gratitude scores were associated with better mood, higher quality sleep, more self-efficacy and less inflammation. Inflammation can often worsen heart failure. What surprised the researchers about the findings, though, was that gratitude fully or partially accounted for the beneficial effects of spiritual well-being. "We found that spiritual well-being was associated with better mood and sleep, but it was the gratitude aspect of spirituality that accounted for those effects, not spirituality per se," said Mills. To further test their findings, the researchers asked some of the patients to write down three things for which they were thankful most days of the week for eight weeks. Both groups continued to receive regular clinical care during that time. "We found that those patients who kept gratitude journals for those eight weeks showed reductions in circulating levels of several important inflammatory biomarkers, as well as an increase in heart rate variability while they wrote. Improved heart rate variability is considered a measure of reduced cardiac risk," said Mills. "It seems that a more grateful heart is indeed a more healthy heart, and that gratitude journaling is an easy way to support cardiac health."