A new study, published online in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, discovered that when people in the lower ranks affirm themselves in a high-pressure environment, their performances significantly improved due to enhanced confidence. This is in relation to the notion that only employees with higher positions usually perform better under pressure.

"Most people have experienced a time in their lives when they are not performing up to their potential and they take a test or have a performance review at work,” said study leader Sonia Kang. “But something holds them back and performance in these situations is closely related to how we are expected to behave."

Using this premise, the authors conducted three separate experiments to identify the level of performance that the employees will exhibit in the face of pressure. They found that those holding higher positions in their organisations performed better, whilst those in the lower ranks performed worst.

For the first experiment, the researchers assigned 134 participants, 60 percent of whom were women in same-sex pairs. They asked these participants to play the role of either a job recruitment specialist or a job applicant. The researchers then created a high-pressure situation wherein 50 percent of the participants were told that the activity was a real measurement of their negotiating skills. Conversely, the other half were told that the only goal of the task was to teach them negotiation ideas and not determine their skills.

The second experiment involved 60 MBA male students paired as a buyer or seller of biotechnology plant. The high position was attributed to the seller and the lower rank to the buyer. At the end of the experiment, the researchers found that more assertiveness were shown by the sellers than the buyers in the pressure-filled situation.

The last experiment, which involved 33 male pairs and 11 female pairs of MBA students, was conducted by telling the study subjects that the upcoming task was to gauge their negotiating abilities. They underwent the same biotechnology plant exercise in high-pressure situation to raise the stakes. For five minutes, 50 percent of the participants wrote the most essential negotiating skills, whilst the other 50 percent noted the least important one. Interestingly, the low-ranked buyers showed significant improvement after performing a positive self-affirmation activity. They exhibited better negotiating power in terms of reducing the sale price of the biotechnology plant, which makes their performance level come close to those of the sellers.

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