When it came time for Dana Jones to pick a topic for her thesis, she decided to get personal.

“I struggled a lot with testing anxiety and knew I wanted to research something related to stress,” says the Psychology Honours student. 

During a literature review, she came across a publication by a group of researchers showing positive results when people taking their Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, were encouraged to view stress as something helpful that could improve outcomes. She wanted to see if this technique, called cognitive reappraisal, could translate to classrooms at MacEwan. 

Together with assistant professor Dr. Michele Moscicki, who researches stress and biofeedback with students, Jones found that the perfect test subjects were lying in wait: first-year introductory psychology students. They chose two classes that were gearing up for a midterm.  

As part of the students’ coursework, they learn about cognitive reappraisal.

Jones gives an easy example: a pounding heart and quickened breath are actually the body's way of getting oxygenated blood to the brain so it can focus better.

The day before the exam, both classes received an email to remind them of the benefits of reframing stress responses. One class received an additional intervention: time during a review period to write about cognitive reappraisal. 

Students self-reported their experiences with anxiety before and after the exam, and included whether they used the reframing technique. 

“A lot of students had this moment of insight through their responses,” says Jones. “They were like, ‘I didn't realize this. But now that I'm doing this activity, I understand that when I'm stressed out, my heart rate increases.’ I think encouraging them to be curious about their own experiences was valuable.”

Curious about the results? Students who used cognitive reappraisal did, in fact, perform better on their midterm than students who viewed stress as a hindrance – even though there wasn’t a significant difference in test anxiety levels for either group. 

Results like that are encouraging for Jones, an aspiring psychologist, whose future likely includes more research opportunities, as she works towards a master’s and a PhD.

Although the research process hasn’t been easy for Jones, who says she didn’t come to MacEwan with a strong academic background, she realizes that there are other things that matter more in this work. 

“It matters that you're open to new ideas, you're willing to learn, you're willing to work hard,” she says. “None of this is intuitive or easy to me. But because of the faculty at MacEwan, I really feel supported when doing this research, and it makes it a lot less scary.”