00:02 how you think about stress impacts the
00:05 stress response in profound ways so this
00:08 paper rethinking stress the role of
00:10 mindsets and determining stress
00:12 did a very simple set of manipulations
00:14 they had people in one group listen to a
00:17 lecture that effectively was titled
00:18 quote the effects of stress are negative
00:20 and should be avoided and that lecture
00:23 included information about how stress
00:25 diminishes performance and how it can
00:27 diminish health and vitality learning
00:30 and performance productivity it
00:32 increases uncertainty Etc okay and all
00:35 of that information is true
00:37 a separate group listened to a lecture
00:39 entitled quote experiencing stress
00:41 improves health and vitality and again
00:44 that information is true now I realize
00:47 that some of you are probably still
00:48 asking how can it be that stress
00:50 diminishes health and performance and
00:52 stress also enhances health and
00:54 performance and the answer lies in two
00:57 things one the level of stress and
00:59 therefore the level of hormones that are
01:01 released in response to that stress the
01:03 duration over which the stress response
01:05 occurs but the key variable here is that
01:08 our cognitive understanding about what
01:11 stress does impacts whether or not our
01:14 physiology goes down the direction of
01:16 debilitating or enhancing effects of
01:18 stress Okay so we've got a condition
01:20 here where people are being informed
01:22 very differently about what stress does
01:24 in one case it's the stresses bad
01:25 message in the other case it's the
01:27 stress is good message and there are
01:29 many different experiments within this
01:30 paper but one of the more interesting
01:34 is where they looked at work performance
01:36 both in terms of performance of what
01:38 they call soft tasks so these are
01:40 somewhat easier tasks as well as hard
01:42 tasks and when you look at the group
01:45 that was given information about how
01:47 stress diminishes performance in the
01:50 soft tasks okay so the somewhat easy
01:52 task You Don't See Much change in their
01:56 as you compare the before the learning
01:59 about stress is diminishing to after the
02:01 learning whereas the people who learn
02:03 that stress is enhancing actually
02:05 experience some improvement in work
02:07 performance even though the challenge
02:09 that they're facing isn't that great so
02:11 again what this means is that learning
02:13 that stress can enhance performance by
02:16 providing people true information about
02:18 how stress can enhance performance can
02:20 increase performance even in the context
02:23 of stuff that's not that hard not that
02:24 stressful even more interesting is that
02:26 when you look at performance on tasks
02:28 that are considered hard and you compare
02:30 the stresses diminishing group meaning
02:32 the group that was taught that stress is
02:35 and compare that to the stresses
02:37 enhancing group you see a really
02:38 Divergent response the people that learn
02:40 that stress diminishes performance did
02:42 not improve at all whereas the people
02:44 that learn that stress can enhance
02:45 performance enhance their performance
02:47 significantly now keep in mind all they
02:50 are doing is learning that stress can
02:52 enhance their performance and then
02:53 they're given the task and they're
02:55 performing better so that's pretty
02:57 spectacular right there's no training
03:00 session that they went and did they
03:01 didn't practice these items that they
03:03 were being tested on in between they
03:05 weren't given a bunch of you know drills
03:07 to do and they didn't take a lot of time
03:08 to do it they just heard a tutorial
03:10 about how stress can enhance performance
03:12 and that I believe is remarkable because
03:15 what it says is that our cognitive
03:17 appraisal about stress which we all are
03:20 going to experience in life right
03:21 elevated heart rate narrowing a visual
03:23 Focus you know shifting of blood away
03:25 from the periphery all of these things
03:27 are characteristic features of the
03:28 stress response that we learn especially
03:31 in this day and age because it's talked
03:32 about a lot in popular culture that oh
03:34 you know all of the these mechanisms
03:36 were put into us in order for us to get
03:38 away from the saber-toothed tiger or the
03:40 or the line that's trying to eat us
03:42 let's be fair the stress response is
03:44 there for a lot of reasons not just
03:46 because of saber-toothed tigers and
03:48 lions I mean that's kind of a story that
03:49 we make up the stress response is
03:52 inherent not just to us but to other
03:53 species as a way to mobilize us either
03:56 away from things or toward things right
03:58 we need to have somewhat of a stress
03:59 response in order to engage in adaptive
04:02 challenge yes it's true that hundreds
04:05 and thousands of years ago those
04:06 adaptive challenges probably involved
04:07 hunting but they probably involved
04:09 Social Challenges as well do you think
04:11 it was you know easy for cavemen and
04:13 women to engage socially and you know
04:15 kind of settle out their romantic
04:16 interactions Etc do you think it was
04:18 easy for them to raise children no of
04:20 course not the stress response is there
04:21 for a variety of reasons not just to get
04:23 away from predators the really exciting
04:26 thing that's been discovered in the
04:28 course of Ali krum's work and other work
04:30 in the last couple of decades is that
04:32 the stress response is neither good nor
04:34 bad the stress response depends on
04:38 whether or not you believe the
04:39 sensations that you're experiencing
04:40 elevated heart rate narrowing a visual
04:42 Focus Etc are serving to enhance your
04:44 performance or diminish your performance
04:46 and this study really points to the fact
04:48 that just learning that it can enhance
04:52 can enhance performance now I know a
04:54 number of you are probably saying wait
04:55 but stress doesn't feel good right and
04:58 oftentimes we experience stress under
05:00 conditions where we're trying to learn
05:01 or get good at something or listen
05:03 better or do something and it actually
05:04 is diminishing performance I think it's
05:06 important to acknowledge that
05:08 this study and studies like it are not
05:10 saying that stress becomes pleasant as a
05:13 sensation in the body nor is it saying
05:15 that it always leads to improved
05:17 performance I don't want you to think
05:19 that's the take-home message sometimes
05:20 it does it can as was demonstrated in
05:23 this research paper but oftentimes as we
05:26 know stress diminishes our performance
05:28 it takes us away from the landmarks we
05:30 want to hit it takes us away from the
05:32 grades we want to get it takes us away
05:34 from quote unquote showing up how we
05:36 want to right no one wants to have the
05:37 blotchy skin and the sweating and the
05:39 quaking of voice when we're trying to do
05:41 public speaking and things of that sort
05:42 no one wants any of that what's
05:45 important to understand is that learning
05:47 that stress is a way of mobilizing
05:49 resources in the body does two things
05:51 first of all it allows us to dampen or
05:55 adjust the stress response in real time
05:57 and it allows us to understand that that
06:00 stress response heightens our level of
06:02 focus in a way that allows us to pay
06:05 attention to the things that are going
06:06 wrong in a way that allows us us to make
06:09 correction to those errors in the future
06:11 so if you think back to that study that
06:13 Erp study where they measured brain
06:14 activity and they looked at people who
06:16 had a fixed mindset versus people who
06:17 had a growth mindset and the people who
06:19 had a growth mindset were paying more
06:21 cognitive attention to what was
06:23 happening during errors and after errors
06:26 well this stress is enhancing mindset is
06:29 very powerful because what it does is it
06:32 shifts one's attention away from the
06:35 kind of somatic experience of oh my
06:36 goodness my heart rate is elevated I'm
06:38 sweating I'm quaking I'm just I sound
06:40 terrible I feel terrible I look terrible
06:41 Etc to a mode of allocating more of our
06:44 thinking toward analyzing why things
06:46 might be going wrong and something else
06:49 powerful happens when we Embrace a
06:50 stresses-enhancing mindset as well when
06:52 we Embrace a stress is enhancing mindset
06:55 it turns out that some of the very
06:57 physiological processes that we call
06:59 quote unquote stress shift in important
07:02 ways some of those include the duration
07:05 over which the stress hormone cortisol
07:07 is released and in fact I don't even
07:09 really want to call it a stress hormone
07:10 because cortisol does so many other
07:12 things as well and it's not bad you need
07:14 cortisol believe me you want cortisol
07:16 especially released early in the day and
07:18 in response to acute stressors what you
07:20 don't want is for cortisol to stay
07:22 elevated for long long periods of time
07:24 and you especially don't want it to
07:26 interfere with your sleep okay so much
07:28 so that I think at times I wonder
07:30 whether or not our philosophy on stress
07:32 should be that stress is fantastic for
07:36 except when it interferes with our sleep
07:38 right and when stress becomes terrible
07:40 for us is when it starts to be
07:42 chronically elevated and especially when
07:43 it starts to inhibit our ability to
07:45 sleep well enough and long enough okay
07:48 so the point here is that when we
07:51 Embrace a stressous enhancing mindset we
07:54 are able to have shorter duration
07:56 release of cortisol we are also able to
07:59 engage what's called increased stroke
08:02 volume under conditions of stress this
08:04 gets a little bit technical but the
08:05 amount of blood that your heart can pump
08:07 with each beat turns out to be a key
08:09 metric of stress when we are very
08:11 stressed even though we need to mobilize
08:12 a lot of resources somewhat
08:14 paradoxically our total stroke volume
08:16 can actually be reduced and we tend to
08:19 shuttle blood and other resources
08:21 towards the core of our body and towards
08:23 major Limbs and away from things like
08:26 our brain and our periphery so one of
08:28 the key measures of how a stress
08:30 response quote unquote is going is how
08:32 much peripheral blood flow there is and
08:34 when we are more relaxed under
08:36 conditions of stress there tends to be
08:37 more peripheral blood flow when we are
08:39 more anxious more panicked under
08:42 conditions of stress peripheral blood
08:43 flow is lower and in a remarkable set of
08:47 Ali Crum and colleagues have shown that
08:50 when we are just taught that stress can
08:52 be enhancing and then we are placed into
08:53 a stressful environment either because
08:55 we are imagining a stress or we are
08:57 experiencing real stress and then our
08:59 physiology is measured
09:01 what is observed is that the total
09:05 amount of blood that the heart can pump
09:07 with each beat is actually increase
09:08 peripheral blood flow increases and our
09:11 ability to maintain cognition to think
09:13 clearly under conditions of stress
09:14 increases and again the only
09:16 manipulation here is a tutorial about
09:19 how stress can be enhancing which is
09:21 essentially what I'm telling you right
