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Right before a big test or an important interview, some people might suffer from performance anxiety. If left unchecked, the anxiety could take over and hinder the person's ability to perform well. When it comes to anxiety, the most common piece of advice is to remember to calm down before the event. Despite how often this advice is given, a new study found that getting excited might be better at easing performance anxiety than attempting to achieve a calm state.

"Anxiety is incredibly pervasive. People have a very strong intuition that trying to calm down is the best way to cope with their anxiety, but that can be very difficult and ineffective," said study author Alison Wood Brooks, PhD, of Harvard Business School. "When people feel anxious and try to calm down, they are thinking about all the things that could go badly. When they are excited, they are thinking about how things could go well."

For this study, the Harvard researchers conducted several experiments with students and members from the local community. In one of the experiments, the researcher recruited 63 men and 77 women. The participants were asked to prepare on giving a public speech about why they would be good to work with. The researchers increased the anxiety levels by informing the participants that they would be videotaped and judged by a committee.

Right before the speech, the researchers asked the participants to say one of two phrases, which were either "I am excited" or "I am calm." The researchers found that people who stated that they were excited tended to give better speeches that were more persuasive, relaxed and competent.

In another one of the experiments, the researchers recruited 188 participants, 108 of them were females. The participants were given math problems right after they read one of two statements, which were "try to get excited" or "try to remain calm." There was also a control group that did not read anything before solving the difficult math problem. The researchers found that people from the excited group had an average score that was eight points higher in comparison to the other two groups. The excited group also reported higher levels of confidence after the test was over.

In one more trial, the researchers randomly assigned 54 men and 59 women to state that they were anxious, calm, excited, angry or sad right before singing a popular song. The control group did not have to say anything. The researchers measured anxiety by recording the participants' heart rates. The researcher found that people who were excited scored around 80 percent on average based on the video game's scoring system that takes pitch, rhythm and volume into account. People who reported that they were calm, angry or sad had an average score of 69 percent. People in the anxiety group had a score of 53 percent.

"The way we talk about our feelings has a strong influence on how we actually feel," said Brooks, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School reported by Medical Xpress.

The study, "Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement," was published by the American Psychological Association's Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.