Test anxiety: why your mind goes blank when you know the material

You studied, you know the material, and the night before you could have explained it to a friend. Then you sit down, read the first question, and nothing comes. An hour after the exam, the answers return.

That pattern has a name. Test anxiety is fear and tension tied to being evaluated, strong enough to get in the way of showing what you know. It appears in school exams, driving tests, job interviews and performance reviews.

Worry and the body

In 1967 Robert Liebert and Larry Morris split test anxiety into two parts. Worry is the thinking side: what happens if I fail, what will people say, everyone else seems to find this easy. Emotionality is the body side: a racing heart, sweaty palms, a tight stomach. In 1988 Ray Hembree combined the research on test anxiety and found that worry was more closely tied to lower results than the bodily reactions were.

Irwin Sarason took the idea further. In a 1984 paper on reactions to tests he described four components: worry, tension, bodily symptoms and thoughts that have nothing to do with the test. His central idea was cognitive interference. Worrying thoughts take up the attention you need for the questions, so a person can know the answer and still fail to reach it.

What our test asks

Our test anxiety test has 10 statements that we wrote ourselves, based on Sarason's components. It is a self-reflection tool, not a validated questionnaire, and it does not diagnose anything. You rate each statement on a five-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and your answers add up to one score.

The statements follow the whole cycle around an exam. Before it: "I sleep worse before an important assessment." During it: "During an exam I think about what happens if I fail instead of about the questions" and "My mind goes blank even though I know the material well." After it: "After handing in my work, I keep analysing the mistakes I might have made." One statement asks whether you avoid being evaluated at all, and one whether you treat a result as a judgement of your worth as a person.

What helped in studies

In 2011 Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock gave students a high-pressure maths test. Beforehand, some of them spent ten minutes writing freely about their worries about the test. Among students who were anxious about tests, those who wrote did better than those who sat quietly. The authors' explanation fits Sarason's idea: putting the worries on paper freed attention that worry had been using.

In 2010 Jeremy Jamieson and colleagues worked with students preparing for the GRE, an American graduate admissions exam. Some were told that a racing heart before a test can help performance. Those students scored higher on the maths questions than students who got no such message. A pounding heart is easier to live with when you read it as energy instead of a warning.

Preparation still counts. Practising under exam-like conditions (a timer, no notes, a desk instead of a sofa) makes the real situation feel less new.

Reading your score

A high score means that exams cost you more than the material does. It says nothing about your ability. Look at which statements you agreed with most. If the body ones stand out, slow breathing and practice under time pressure are worth trying. If the worry ones stand out, writing your worries down before the exam costs ten minutes.

If anxiety also appears outside exams, keeps you from taking tests you need, or comes with weeks of poor sleep, talk to a doctor, a psychologist or a school or university counsellor. The GAD-7 anxiety test is a short screening for broader anxiety, and the guide on how to deal with anxiety collects practical techniques. For everyday pressure, try the Perceived Stress Scale.