Inquiry · Emotion and Performance · Part 3 of 4

Working With It

What the evidence says about steering a feeling instead of fighting it, and what is oversold.

By Orion QuinOctober 19, 2026About 24 minutes

Any one can get angry (that is easy) or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.9, trans. W. D. Ross (1925)

Steering, not silencing

Hardly anyone has calmed down because someone told them to. The instruction asks for something a person in that state can rarely do on command, and it carries a quiet message underneath: the feeling is the problem. Part 1 argued that it usually isn’t. Part 2 followed a feeling into the thinking mind and the body. This part asks the practical question. If a feeling is doing a job, what do I do with it?

The word I keep reaching for is steering. A feeling that is the right size and pointed at the task is something to use. A feeling that is too big, or aimed at the wrong thing, is something to turn. Either way the work is the same kind of work: notice it, decide what it is for, and give attention something to do. I am a reader of this literature, not an authority on it, and it is large and uneven. So I have sorted it by how much weight each piece can carry and by what kind of outcome it measured. Most of what holds up is plain and a little dull, which I have come to take as a good sign.

In brief

Regulation tools act at different moments. Gross’s process model orders them by when they work as a feeling unfolds, so they are not rivals.¹
In pooled studies, changing what a feeling means moved emotional outcomes more than hiding it. Reappraisal-type strategies averaged d = 0.36, suppression-type 0.16, plain distraction about zero. That is not a ranking for every situation.^2,3
A pounding heart can be read as readiness. The effect on performance is small (d = 0.23), cheap, and not a guarantee.⁴
Give attention a job. Routines and practice under pressure have the best support for performance. If-then plans have large effects, but on emotional outcomes.^5,6,2
Ask a sorting question first. Before trying to change the feeling, ask whether the situation itself needs to change. If the feeling is reporting a real gap, closing the gap usually beats managing the feeling.⁷
Nothing here treats persistent anxiety or low mood. Those deserve a clinician.

0.36reappraisal-type, emotional outcomes

0.91if-then plans vs. no instructions, emotional outcomes

0.70routines under pressure, performance, g, wide interval

0.00distraction-type, emotional outcomes

Regulation happens at five moments

The most widely used way to think about emotion regulation is James Gross’s process model, which sorts strategies by when they act as an emotion unfolds: before it starts, as it starts, and after it has begun.¹ I like it because it dissolves a false argument. People defend a favorite technique as if the others were wrong, when a routine, a reframe and a slow breath work on different stages of the same event. I have done this myself. The skill is knowing which stage you are at.

Figure 1. Gross’s process model orders regulation by when it acts as an emotion unfolds. The evidence column is this article’s rough summary of the research cited in the text, not a score from any one study.¹

Reading down the figure, the earliest moves are the cheapest. Choosing and changing the situation (arrive early, rehearse under mild stakes, fix what can be fixed) acts before any feeling has to be managed. Aiming attention and reinterpreting meaning come once the feeling has started. Modulating the response, by suppressing its expression or slowing the breath, comes last. The evidence column in the figure is my own rough summary, not a score from any one study, and breathing is the item I can say least about in this setting.

The earliest tools are the cheapest. The last ones are what you reach for when the earlier ones were skipped.On when to steer

What the strategy comparisons show

One large body of work, summarized in a 2012 review, compared strategy families by how much they changed emotional outcomes. Strategies close to cognitive change (reappraisal) averaged d = 0.36 across 91 comparisons. Strategies close to response modulation (suppression) came in at 0.16 across 92. Attentional deployment, which is close to plain distraction, was essentially zero across 205.² The pattern fits Gross’s account: suppression changes the outward expression more than the inner experience, while reappraisal changes the experience.¹ It is an average across studies, not a universal ranking, and the outcomes are emotional, not performance.

The evidence in more detailwhy this is not a ranking

The groupings are broad. In another study, reappraisal ability went with better mood when stressors were uncontrollable and worse when they were controllable,³ and the 47-study review of choking interventions, which looked at performance, listed reappraisal cues among its null results.⁶

Changes the experience

Reappraisal

You reinterpret what the situation or the sensation means. The feeling shifts because its meaning shifted.

d = 0.36 on emotional outcomes.²

Changes the display

Suppression

You hold the expression in. The feeling is mostly still there, and holding costs effort.

d = 0.16 on emotional outcomes.²

A word on distraction, because the flat result invites a misreading. Plain distraction is not the same as giving attention a task-relevant job. A routine, a cue word or a specific point to look at is attention doing something useful. Looking away from a feeling is a weaker move than looking at the work.

Figure 2. Emotional and self-reported outcomes. These are not performance measures.^2,8,9

Every bar on that chart is an emotional or self-reported outcome, not a performance measure, and the strongest-looking result (if-then plans) is the one to trust least until it is tested on performance. The chart shows where the evidence is thick. It does not rank what will help you on Tuesday.

Reading the body as readiness

Part 2 set out the difference between a challenge state and a threat state: the same racing heart, read as resources enough for the demand or as more demand than resources.¹⁰ People in a challenge state performed better across several domains, sport among them, though the effects were small.¹¹ The practical question is whether the reading can be taught.

In the laboratory study that made arousal reappraisal famous, people told that their stress response could help them showed more adaptive cardiovascular responses, and less attentional bias toward threat cues, than people told to ignore their arousal.¹⁰ In studies of singing, public speaking and math, Alison Wood Brooks found that people who reappraised pre-performance anxiety as excitement felt more excited and performed better than people who tried to calm down. Short self-statements, such as saying “I am excited” aloud, were enough.¹²

The honest size of the effect is modest. A 2024 meta-analysis of 44 effect sizes found an overall improvement of d = 0.23 for arousal reappraisal and stress-mindset interventions. Interventions that mixed reappraisal with other content did better (d = 0.45, from only five comparisons), and the stress-is-enhancing mindset interventions on their own did not reach significance. The authors call them promising, cheap and not silver bullets.⁴ The 47-study review of choking interventions listed reappraisal cues among the items with null results.⁶ Both statements are true, and I hold both: a small effect on average, no guarantee in any one setting.

A note on scope

Reading arousal as readiness is meant for performance-type stress: a talk, a test, a start line. It is not a treatment for panic attacks, an anxiety disorder or depression, and it should not be used to talk yourself out of symptoms that are frequent, intense or disabling. Those call for a clinician.

Name it, and talk to yourself like a coach

Two small tools share a mechanism: putting a feeling into words puts a little distance between you and it. In one imaging study, labeling an emotion reduced amygdala activity and raised activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, as if naming the feeling recruited the part of the brain that helps manage it.¹³ It measured brain activity, not performance, and the effect was short-term, so it is a reason to try naming and not proof that it works on a start line.

The second tool is stranger and better supported than it sounds: change the pronoun. In seven studies with 585 participants, people who used their own name or “you” rather than “I” when thinking about an upcoming social stressor appraised it as more of a challenge and less of a threat. They did better and felt less distress and rumination during tasks such as first impressions and public speaking. The effect did not depend on how socially anxious people were, though the rumination and anticipation findings each rest on one or two studies.¹⁴ It is the move a good coach makes: “You have done this before.” Said to yourself, in the second person, it seems to work much the same way.

Writing the worry out

Two experiments reported together in Science by Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock tested an almost embarrassingly simple instruction: before the test, spend ten minutes writing about your worries. In a laboratory experiment with 20 college students put under pressure on a math test, the students who wrote about their feelings improved their accuracy by about 5 percent, while those who sat quietly dropped by about 12 percent. In a field study with ninth-grade biology students, highly anxious students who wrote scored on average a B+, compared with a B− for those who did not. The benefit came from writing about the test specifically.¹⁵

Figure 3. Two experiments reported together. Small samples, one research group, and the benefit came from writing about the test itself. An encouraging result, not a settled one.¹⁵

Small samples and one research group, so I count it as encouraging and nothing more. It is one of the few items here measured on an actual test, which is why it earns a place.

Try this: write it out, then name it

Before something that matters, give yourself a few minutes with a pen. Write what you are worried might happen, and when it fits, name the feeling in a word or two. If you use self-talk, try your own name or “you” instead of “I.”

Evidence: writing, two experiments from one group, on test scores;¹⁵ distanced self-talk, seven studies, mostly on appraisal and distress;¹⁴ naming, imaging only.¹³ Cheap to test, none of it settled.

Decide in advance: plans, routines, and practice under pressure

The most striking number in the pile belongs to implementation intentions, which are if-then plans of the form if X happens, then I will do Y. Compared with no instructions they averaged d+ = 0.91 (21 comparisons, 1,306 people), and compared with simply having a goal intention 0.53 (29 comparisons, 1,208 people).² Read what was measured. These are effects on emotional outcomes in studies where people held an emotion-regulation goal. They are not effects on athletic or professional performance, and nobody should read them that way. A plausible reason for the effect is that a plan made in advance does not have to be invented under pressure, when inventing would draw on the very resources pressure takes away. That is a reason, not a finding.

Figure 4. The format is the same whatever the content: a cue, then one action small enough to do under pressure. The examples are illustrations, not tested scripts. The pooled effects for the format are on the effect-size chart.²

Routines work on the same principle from a different side. A systematic review of 47 studies on choking interventions found that, on the whole, they helped. The most consistently supported were pre-performance routines, quiet-eye training, left-hand contractions and acclimatization (practicing under pressure). Goal setting, neurofeedback and reappraisal cues showed null results.⁶ A 2024 meta-analysis of pre-performance routines, covering 112 effect sizes, found moderate-to-large effects in experiments under pressure (Hedges’ g = 0.70, wide interval) and a smaller effect in pre-post designs, and the type of routine did not change the result.⁵ A June 2026 position statement from Exercise and Sports Science Australia names routines and pressure training in practice among its strategy families.¹⁶

The wide interval on the routine result runs from small to very large, so the safe claim is that routines help on average and the amount is uncertain. Best supported on a modest list is not the same as a sure thing.

Choose the sequence. Three or four steps you can do anywhere: a breath, a cue word, a point to look at, one specific first action.

Rehearse it calm. Until it runs itself, so it costs almost nothing when you need it.

Rehearse it with a little at stake. A witness, a score, a small penalty. Rehearsal takes the surprise out of pressure.

Add the if-then plan. What you will do when it slips, decided in advance rather than improvised.

A constructed scene

A man writes his plan on an index card the night before a talk: if my voice shakes, then slow down and plant my feet. He rehearses it twice at the kitchen table. On the day, three sentences in, his voice shakes, and the plan is nowhere. What is there is the shaking, and the thought that everyone has heard it. Several sentences later, in the middle of a slide, he remembers the card in his pocket. The plan worked in the sense that it existed. It did not work in the sense that he used it. The next time he tapes the card inside the lectern and says the cue aloud once before he begins, so the first time he meets it is not under load. Most of the work in these tools, I suspect, lives in the gap between having one and reaching for it. He is constructed, not a real person.

Try this: one routine, one plan

Pick three or four task-relevant steps you can do anywhere and rehearse them until they run themselves. Then write one if-then plan for the moment the routine slips. Keep both small enough to do with a shaky voice.

Evidence: routines, moderate to large on performance with a wide interval;⁵ plans, large on emotional outcomes only.²

The sorting question: does the situation need to change?

One caution runs through everything above: regulation is not a substitute for acting. In a study of 170 people, higher reappraisal ability went with lower depression scores when people’s stressors were uncontrollable, and with higher scores when the stressors were controllable.³ The study is cross-sectional and controllability was self-reported, so it is a pointer and not a proof. It still suggests a free question to ask before any technique: does the situation itself need to change? If it does, start there. That is not a rule that regulation belongs only to what cannot be changed. Even when you can change the situation, a steadier state probably helps you act well. That is a reasoned point, not a finding, and it is the reason the tools above are worth having.

Figure 5. A working sorting question, drawn from the evidence rather than from any single trial. Ask first whether the situation needs to change; a feeling that reports a real gap is best met by closing the gap, and steering the feeling still helps you act well.^3,7

The second half of the sorting question comes from the study Part 1 described: 309 German medical students whose test anxiety stopped predicting their exam scores once their preparation was counted. They had learned less, and the anxiety was reporting it.⁷

The evidence in more detail309 medical students

The researchers tracked performance across a 72-day preparation phase and compared it with mock-exam and final-exam results. Test anxiety did correlate with lower exam scores (about r = −.20 for the final exam). But it did not predict a drop from mock exam to final exam, and it no longer predicted final-exam performance once the mock-exam score or preparation performance was controlled for. Fewer correct answers predicted more anxiety the next day, not the reverse.⁷

Figure 6. A conceptual illustration. In one study of 309 medical students, test anxiety stopped predicting exam scores once preparation was accounted for. It is one sample, and a selective one.⁷

It is one selective sample, and I would not generalize it to every exam or every person. The caution about technique is the takeaway. If anxiety is sometimes an accurate report that you are not ready, a technique that mutes the feeling without closing the gap has taken out the smoke detector and left the fire. Sort first, then choose the technique.

Try this: sort before you steer

Name the feeling, then ask two questions. Can I change what it is about? Is it reporting a real gap? Close the gap, use the feeling, or steer it, in that order.

Evidence: suggestive, from controllability and medical-student studies.^3,7 It costs nothing.

The whole toolbox, with the catch for each item

This is the practical reference for the part: every tool in one place, rated roughly by how much weight the evidence can carry. The ratings are my judgment, not statistics, and the meters are not effect sizes or a ranking, because the studies differ in design, in who was studied and in what the tool was compared against. One segment means a thin base, two some support with clear limits, three a repeated or well-designed finding with a caveat that matters. Four would mean a large, consistent body of evidence, and no tool in this part reaches it. An empty meter means essentially no effect on the outcome shown. Each row also names the kind of outcome measured, because a result on emotion, on a brain scan and on performance are three different claims.

Figure 7. A rough rating of the evidence for each tool in this part (four segments is strongest). It is the author’s judgment about design, size and replication, not a statistic. The underlying studies differ in design, population, outcome and comparison condition, so the meters are not effect sizes and are not a ranking. The tag on each row names the kind of outcome the research measured: emotion for some tools, performance for others, brain activity for naming.^{5,6,2,4,14,15,13}

The evidence in more detailthe toolbox as a table, with outcome and caveat for each item

A working toolbox, with the evidence behind each item
Tool	What it is	Outcome measured	Evidence in brief	Caveat
Reappraise arousal	Treat the pounding heart as readiness	Performance (small); heart and attention in the lab	Cardiovascular and attention effects in the lab;¹⁰ gains in singing, speaking and math;¹² pooled d = 0.23⁴	Small effect; a null in the choking review
Name the feeling	Put the emotion into words	Mechanism (brain activity)	In an imaging study, labeling reduced amygdala activity¹³	Imaging, not performance; short-term
Distance yourself	Use your own name or “you” in self-talk	Appraisal, distress and rated speech performance	Seven studies, 585 people¹⁴	Several findings rest on one or two studies
Write the worry out	Ten minutes of expressive writing before the test	Performance (test scores)	Lab and ninth-grade field study¹⁵	Small samples; one research group
If-then plan	Decide in advance what you will do when X happens	Emotional outcomes	d+ = 0.91 and 0.53 on emotional outcomes²	Emotional outcomes, not performance
Routine	A short fixed sequence before the action	Performance under pressure	g = 0.70 under pressure, wide interval;⁵ best supported in the choking review⁶	Interval from small to very large
Practice under pressure	Rehearse with something at stake	Performance	Acclimatization supported;⁶ endorsed by the 2026 position statement¹⁶	Dose and fidelity of the pressure vary

From my own rowing, remembered, and an illustration

I rowed at Cal starting in 1989, and the mornings below are how I remember them. Each step has two parts: what happened, then a tool a rower could pair with it today. I did not use these tools by name at the time. The pairings are an illustration, the tools come from different studies, and nobody has tested the sequence as a package.

Before the day: the stakes. We were up at 5:00 to be at the boathouse by 6:00, in a van of teammates who were mostly short of sleep. Skipping practice was never an option, because you could lose your seat or let the others down, and then they would have to erg instead of row. Pairing: sort what you can change, then write one if-then plan for the moment it slips. Plans: emotional outcomes. Rehearsal with something at stake: performance.

Arrival: the sequence. We shuffled in quietly, checked the lineups, got the oars down, took our seats and shoved off. The order never changed. Pairing: a routine, a short fixed sequence before the action. Best-supported item here for performance, with a wide interval.

Warm-up: the race that does not count. We drilled by sixes to let the bodies warm. Even the warm-up was a dance and a race, and you never wanted to be down on another boat. Never. Pairing: name the feeling and reread it as readiness. Small effect on performance, with a null in the choking review.

The first strokes. Once we started rowing, we had a good idea within the first ten strokes of how the row would go; Part 1 says more. Pairing: a cue word in the second person, aimed at the feel of the boat. Distanced self-talk: appraisal and distress, small studies.

The practiced conditions. Racing has never been a place of great anxiety for me, and I come back to why below. Pairing: practice under pressure, so the conditions are familiar. Acclimatization is among the better-supported choking interventions.

After: the result. The two 1990 races in Part 2 are the example: a medal, and weeks later a loss to the best in the country that I read as a privilege and not a verdict. Pairing: check the guess, then reappraise. What did you expect to feel, what happened, what is the useful reading? Reappraisal: small effect, mixed by context.

Try this: practice with something at stake

A witness, a score, a small penalty. Rehearsal takes the surprise out of pressure, which is the closest thing to a rowing morning that I can offer anyone off the water.

Evidence: acclimatization is among the better-supported choking interventions.⁶ Dose and fidelity of the pressure vary across studies.

Keeping notes on the driver

Everything above assumes you can tell what you are feeling, whether it is the right size, and whether the tool you tried made a difference. The research I cited measures effects on groups. You are one person, and your first job is to get a clearer reading of your own state than a general rule can give you.

Here is my own thinking, and it is only that. I have been wrong about my own state often enough that I no longer trust a hunch I have not checked. So I like a simple habit: before something demanding, write down in a line what I expect to feel, and afterward write what actually happened. Over weeks, the gap between the two is the information. A feeling gets a name and a history instead of a mood. I am not citing a trial for this. It is how I would test the sorting question on myself, nothing more, and your notes can be as small as a few words in a margin.

There is a second question I try to be honest about, which is who sees the notes. Private notes about how you felt before a hard moment are different from a score or a result, and I think they should stay yours unless you choose otherwise. A log you are afraid someone will read is a log you will start editing. If you ever share any of it with a coach or a teacher, I would share the least that serves the purpose, and keep the interior layer for yourself. Tracking tools, from a notebook to a wearable, are good at producing numbers and poor at telling you what a number means. The meaning still comes from you.

Try this: guess, then check

Write one line before and one line after something that matters: what I expect to feel, and what happened. Decide in advance who, if anyone, sees it.

Evidence: none cited. This is my own habit, offered as a way to test the sorting question on yourself, not a validated method.

Preparing the conditions

Racing has never been a place of great anxiety for me, and I do not say that as a boast. I say it because of what I think produced it, which was repetition, not temperament. Once you have practiced something a thousand times, you learn that you can only prepare the conditions, not the outcome.

You can only prepare the conditions, not the outcome.From my own rowing

It took me a long time to hear what that sentence gives back. If the outcome is not mine to order, neither is the feeling that arrives with it, and the demand to feel calm is a demand to control something that was never in my hands. What is in my hands is smaller and more useful: the sequence I rehearse, the plan for when it slips, the pressure I have practiced under, the sorting question I ask before I reach for a tool. Every item in the toolbox is a way of preparing conditions. None of them is a way of ordering a feeling to leave.

Once a movement is automatic it flows, and the thinking of the movement is what disrupts it. That is the quiet center of this subject for me. The preparation is done earlier, so attention can be spent on the water and not on myself. I recognize this is the account of one person in one sport, and the studies in this part do not show it works that way for everyone. It is how it has looked from the bow seat. Don’t over complicate it. Start with one small thing.

What would I prepare, if I stopped asking a feeling to leave?

What this does not show

A few honest limits, since this part has more numbers than most.

This is a lens, not a diagnosis. The functional view of emotion is a theory about the system. An individual episode can be the wrong size, at the wrong time, or aimed at the wrong thing.
Outcome type matters. Many of the biggest numbers here are about emotional outcomes or brain activity, not performance. Treat their transfer to performance as a hypothesis.
The routine interval is wide. g = 0.70 runs from small to very large. Do not quote the point estimate alone.
The example scripts are illustrations, not tested wording, and the rowing sequence has not been tested as a package. It is my memory of mornings on the water, paired with tools from different studies.
The evidence ratings are my judgment, not statistics.
The index-card scene is constructed. It illustrates the gap between having a tool and using it, and does not report a real person.
Nothing here is a treatment. Persistent or intense anxiety or low mood deserves a clinician.

The turn

What do I keep asking a feeling to do that only preparation can do?

Every tool in this part fails in the same place: the moment you notice where your attention has gone and bring it back. A routine you cannot hold in mind, a reframe you forget at the start line, a plan you cannot recall when your voice shakes.

That loop, noticing and returning, is what meditation trains, and it is also where its hype lives. Part 4 looks at what the different practices train, what two weeks of it did in one small study,¹⁷ what 111 trials say in total,¹⁸ and where the risks are.¹⁹ An appendix proposes a question I think can be tested: when do feeling, body and attention line up, and does that predict how someone does?

Next in the series: Part 4, Training Attention.

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