Mind Under Pressure

Welcome! You’ll play two rounds of a memory matching game where your goal is to match pairs of cards with the same word. This isn’t just for fun (though I hope it is)—it’s designed to explore how stress and anxiety affect cognitive performance, particularly on working memory tasks. Memory games like this are often used in psychological research because they are engaging, simple, and offer clear metrics for performance (Thibodeau, 2021, p. 3143).


Why memory? Why stress?

When we’re anxious, our body enters a heightened state of arousal—our heart rate rises, muscles tense, and we start to sweat. This is your sympathetic nervous system kicking in (Maloney, 2014, p. 406). These physiological reactions require mental resources to regulate—the same resources we need for cognitive tasks (Maloney, 2014, p. 410).

At the same time, anxiety often brings along a flood of negative thoughts and worries—“What if I mess up?” or “What will people think?” These thoughts also occupy working memory, leaving fewer cognitive resources available to focus on the task (Maloney, 2014, p. 407). This two-pronged effect—physiological arousal and mental distraction—can impair performance, especially when we really want to do well (Maloney, 2014, p. 407).

Moderate levels of arousal can actually enhance performance—keeping us alert, focused, and motivated. But if arousal climbs too high or it's framed as fear, it becomes anxiety, and that’s when performance tends to suffer (Maloney, 2014, p. 403). This phenomenon is often described as the inverted-U relationship between stress and performance.