By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“mindfulness helps us discover a different kind of confidence. We learn that courage isn’t the absence of fear – it’s being willing to have that fear, and knowing that we can cope, by holding it in kind awareness.” – Sheila Bayliss
It is so common to fear giving speeches in public, that it is actually less common not to. In fact, about 75% of humanity has severe anxiety about speaking in public. Indeed, people prefer to administer small but uncomfortable shocks to themselves than give a 5-min speech about their personal attributes. Surveys suggest that people fear public speaking more than death. It’s been quipped that we would prefer to be in the coffin than giving the eulogy!
Public speaking is very stressful including physiological responses indicative of the fight or flight response such as increased cortisol (stress hormone) levels. There are, however, a variety of therapies that are effective for speech phobia. Mindfulness training would appear to be a likely candidate. It has been shown to reduce anxiety, alleviate phobias, and reduce the psychological and physiological responses to stress. In today’s Research News article ““Letting Go” (Implicitly): Priming Mindfulness Mitigates the Effects of a Moderate Social Stressor.” See:
or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4904283/
Bergeron and colleagues investigate whether a brief induction of mindfulness with an implicit priming procedure can improve the recovery from the anxiety, arousal, and stress of giving a public speech.
They recruited college students and measured mindfulness prior to a laboratory session in which the students completed scales measuring self-esteem, stress, and positive and negative emotions. They then provided a saliva sample for measurement of cortisol. They were then instructed and gave a public speech and provided another saliva sample. Afterwards they were randomly separated into either an implicit mindfulness priming group was primed with mindfulness words or a control group that was primed with neutral words. Afterwards, they again competed measures of self-esteem, stress, positive and negative emotions, and physiological arousal. Finally, they provided three more saliva samples immediately after the priming, and 15 and 30 minutes later.
Bergeron and colleagues found that participants who were low to begin with in mindfulness were helped by the mindfulness priming results in higher self-esteem and lower levels of stress, physiological arousal, and negative emotions. They also found that the mindfulness priming produced a greater decrease in the indicator of stress, cortisol levels. So, a brief mindfulness induction improves recovery from the anxiety, arousal, and stress of public speaking.
These results suggest that a simple implicit priming procedure improves the recovery from stress for everyone and improves the psychological state of participants who were low in mindfulness at the outset. The findings are in line with previous studies of mindfulness training effects. But, these results are particularly interesting because they didn’t require extensive mindfulness training to produce reductions in responsiveness to stress or improve psychological well-being. It only required a brief implicit mindfulness prime. This suggests that anything that improves mindfulness can have marked effects on stress and well-being for as long as the increased mindfulness persists. Training can produce long-lasting increase in mindfulness and therefor long-lasting effects while mindfulness priming can produce brief increases in mindfulness and brief effects.
“The power of a mindfulness practice, however, may come in the realization that one can live a meaningful life even with social anxiety. Schjerning, says that he still feels nervous in social situations but now feels compassion — not judgment — for himself, and sees that “I can be more the person I want to be.” – Jason Drwal
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts
Study Summary
Bergeron, C. M., Almgren-Doré, I., & Dandeneau, S. (2016). “Letting Go” (Implicitly): Priming Mindfulness Mitigates the Effects of a Moderate Social Stressor. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 872. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00872
Abstract
This experimental study investigated whether implicitly priming mindfulness would facilitate psychological and cortisol recovery after undergoing a standardized psychological stressor. After completing baseline measures of well-being, all participants (N = 91) completed a public speaking stress task, were implicitly primed with “mindfulness” or “neutral” concepts using a scrambled sentence task, and finally, reported their situational well-being and provided cortisol samples. Simple moderation regression analyses revealed that the implicit mindfulness condition had significant beneficial effects for participants with low trait mindfulness. These participants reported higher situational self-esteem as well as less negative affect, perceived stress, and self-reported physiological arousal than their counterparts in the control condition. Cortisol analyses revealed that participants in the implicit mindfulness condition, regardless of level of trait mindfulness, showed a greater decline in cortisol during the early recovery stage compared to those in the control condition. Overall, results suggest that implicitly activating mindfulness can mitigate the psychological and physiological effects of a social stressor.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4904283/