Stress is one of the great enemies of the 21st century for the health of the busy human being and, according to this new study, its effects could arrive even before everything happens .
A study carried out by the University of the State of Pennsylvania indicates that starting the morning thinking about how stressful the day is going to be can seriously affect the way you think during it. The participants in the experiment, according to the researchers, saw their working memory performance affected when they woke up thinking about the stressful situations they might have throughout the day. Working memory is responsible for learning, memorizing and retaining information even when attention is not being paid.
Jinshil Hyun, a doctoral student participating in the study, says that the effects of stress begin before the events themselves occur and cause them. “Humans can think and anticipate things before they happen, which helps prepare them but can also be detrimental to daily memory functioning .” Working memory can affect many aspects of daily life and lower functioning will have negative effects on people’s daily lives, especially in older adults who already have cognitive deficiencies.
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According to the study, ‘a reduced working memory increases the probability of making mistakes at work or having difficulty concentrating’ and this, in specific situations, can have serious consequences. The great novelty of this research is that, contrary to previous studies, it focuses on analyzing the emotional, cognitive and psychological effects of anticipating stressful events that have not yet occurred in a daily context.
For the data collection, the team brought together 240 people of different ethnicities and economic levels. For two weeks, they had to answer seven questions a day through a smartphone app. The questions focused on knowing the stress expectations throughout the day, knowing the actual stress and anticipating the stress that would be the next day. They also completed memory exercises five times a day. The main advantage of this type of study is that the measurements were made according to real life circumstances and not in isolated settings.
The results obtained in the study emphasize the importance of mentality and attitude when facing day-to-day life and is expected to open the door to future interventions that help people predict when their cognitive system is in optimal condition . The team intends to conduct complementary studies to obtain even more data on the profound effects of stress on the physiological state of people.
