essay self-affirmation task. For the individuals who did not complete the self-affirmation task, low-stress participants performed significantly better than high-stress participants. For individuals in the self-affirmation condition, high-stress individuals performed equally as well as low-stress individuals. Findings suggest that self-affirmation buffered against the negative effects of stress on problem-solving performance.

For another experiment, undergraduates were recruited to participate in a research study two weeks prior to completing