Neuro II Podcast - Dakota

Matt, an accounting major, joins Dakota to discuss an experiment in their neuroscience class. The experiment looked at the effects of social support on stress and working under pressure. They split the room in half and exposed each half to different conditions. The group that had stricter time constraints reported higher stress levels. Matt prefers working individually and finds group work stressful due to concerns about performance and trust. He believes that groups who know each other prior to a project work better. Matt handles pressure well and would try to calm himself down during an unexpected quiz. In the McGowan School of Business, people tend to work individually more. External factors and individual differences were considered in the experiment. Hello everyone. This is Dakota and today I'm joined by a special guest, Matt. Matt is an accounting major here at King's. Hi Matt. Hey Dakota. Thanks for having me. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Today we'll be talking about an experiment conducted in my neuroscience class. Doesn't that sound like a blast for you? Someone with little interest in neuroscience? That sounds great. What was your experiment about? I'm glad you asked. It's believed that social support can help to alleviate anxiety and stress, so we decided to look at effects on stress and working under pressure in a particular social setting while under a more strict or less strict time constraint. That's interesting. How'd you do that? My group and I split the room in half and only exposed each half to one condition of our independent variable, which makes this a between-subjects design experiment. The experimenters created a survey asking about perceived stress levels, working under pressure, and academic performance, which was scored using a Likert scale. It was distributed both before and after manipulation. Then everyone answered the same seven questions that were presented via PowerPoint slides pertaining to neuroscience, which was compiled by the experimenters. One half of the room worked individually and were allotted less time, and the other half worked in pairs and were allotted more time to answer the questions. My group hypothesized that when asking students to answer questions, individuals under a stricter time constraint would report higher levels of stress compared to those working in groups under a less strict time constraint. Wow, that's really cool. What did your group find? Our hypothesis was supported. We found that individuals self-reported higher levels of stress and lower abilities to work under pressure. So, now I have to ask you. In your classes, how often do you work in groups compared to working individually? We work in groups quite often, actually, but we kind of get a little bit more individual work, but I do find myself in groups fairly often in class. Do you think group work stresses you out more than individual work? Definitely. Mainly just because I'm worried about my performance being good enough for the other people in my group as well as their performance and getting things done on time. There's a lot of trust that you have to have in between people. That's true. I totally agree with you. So, do you think maybe you might have the propensity to work better by yourself than in a group? Personally, I do, but that's just because I tend to get distracted. I tend to be a talker, so that's something I struggle with, for sure, in groups. I see. I see. That makes sense. Do you think you would agree that the group members matter? Like if you know somebody, your group members, you're more likely to work better than if you're with total strangers? Oh, for sure. I believe groups that know each other prior to the group project or whatever they may be working on, they definitely work better from the gate than a group that doesn't really know each other as well, I would say, in my opinion. Yeah, I think so, too. So, how well do you work under pressure, such as if you're faced with an unexpected timed quiz? Personally, I'd like to say I handle pressure okay. Probably not any worse than the next guy, not any better either, but for something like an unexpected quiz, I would feel a little bit of initial stress, but I'd probably try and calm myself down just so I could do the best that I could. Okay. All right. So, if this study were to be replicated in the McGowan School of Business, how do you think results might differ? I think definitely in McGowan, people tend to work by themselves a little bit more. We tend to enjoy our individual work there. Okay. Do you have any questions for me? I actually do have a question for you. Go for it. Was there any, like, external factors that were taken into account when – that could have affected your sample in any way, or these results? Yeah, of course. When conducting this experiment, or really most experiments, you have to take into consideration individual differences. Like, some people just naturally work better under pressure and things like that. They just get less nervous for assessments of any sort and that type of thing. Wow. Really cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you so much for talking with me today, Matt. You've been a great guest, and thank you to everybody who listened today. I hope you all have a great day.