Stress in college life: Toward an understanding of test-anxiety, academic performance, and brief mindfulness meditation

15–40% of college students experience test-anxiety (Hill & Wigfield, 1984), a distressing emotional state characterized by cognitive, behavioural, and physiological responses elicited by a testing situation (Zeidner, 1998). Previous work suggests that high test-anxiety can impair test performance and academic achievement (e.g., Cizek & Burg, 2006). State-level test-anxiety can not only impair the cognitive processes required to perform well on tests (e.g., attention; Spielberger, et al.,1 978), but can produce mind-wandering (Zeidan, et al., 2010) which can result in learning and memory impairments (Mrazek et al., 2013), poor test performance, and hampered academic achievement (Ng, Koh and Chia, 2003). Mindfulness-based interventions have gained popularity as suitable stress management options in campus settings. MM programs have typically ranged between eight to ten weeks (MBSR; Kabat-Zinn, 1982), though recent research has examined briefer formats. Mindfulness meditation (MM) refers to the cultivation of nonjudgmental, moment-to-moment awareness. Previous work suggests that brief MM can reduce test-anxiety (e.g., Cho, Ryu, Noh, & Lee, 2016), improve cognitive functioning (e.g., Zeidan et al., 2010), and enhance academic performance by enhancing working memory, inhibiting task irrelevant thoughts, and promoting attentional stability and self-regulation (e.g., Calma-Birling & Gurung, 2017; Moore & Malinowski, 2009). Hypotheses: State-anxiety levels will be lower in the brief mindfulness meditation group than the control group. Those who engage in brief MM will score higher on an academic performance test than those in the control group. Results: As expected, an independent-samples t-test using difference scores indicated that the MM group (M=-14.41, SD= 12.95) had greater anxiety reduction than the control group (M=-2.45, SD=12.49), t (46) = -3.35, p = .002, d=0.94), such that state-anxiety levels were significantly lower in the MM group. Differences in academic performance scores for the brief MM and control group were not significant, t(45) =-.617, p = .540, d=0.22, with means (SD) of 11.13 (3.10) and 11.70 (3.30), respectively. A series of two-way ANOVA’s revealed that gender and prior meditation experience had no effect on anxiety reduction in the MM group.