Throughout my academic career, I've come across a variety of nerve-racking pre-exam moments. I remember vividly the various ways my classmates and I handled the last minutes before our final examinations: while some tried to relax and laugh away the tension, others studied until the last second, driving everyone crazy with stressed-out questioning. I'd have to admit to always being part of that latter group. My strategy was to harass the biggest nerd on the subject with all of my uncertainties and loads of questions. I always needed to find answers, but since the matter was crystal-clear to the poor guy I was stalking and he didn't understand any of my vaguely formulated questions, I only got more frustrated and insecure. Despite this fact, I never changed my strategy: although our communication was very effortful and fruitless, I figured that if anyone could improve my result on the exam, it had to be the expert. Guess what: I was wrong! In this article, I'll explain why and hopefully save all of you from that horrible feeling of stupidity I experienced so often due to my ideas of what constituted successful exam preparation.

I found enlightenment in an article by Finkel, Campbell, Brunell, Dalton, Scarbeck and Chartrand (2006). In this article, the authors demonstrate that inefficient social coordination on an interpersonal task can impair self-regulation on an individual level in an unrelated task. In other words, desperately trying to communicate with someone you do not understand and who does not understand you will worsen your performance on a following task you do by yourself. Before examining the deeper reasoning behind this thought, let’s first explore the terms in this sentence. If two individuals work together on a task, or even have a conversation together, they engage in interpersonal interaction. When the individuals are able to align their behaviours in an effortless and efficient manner, their interaction is characterized by effective social coordination. When the social coordination requires more energy than you would expect from the interaction, it could be referred to as high maintenance interaction. The authors argue that engaging in high-maintenance interactions influences performance on subsequent, unrelated, individual tasks. To explain this line of reasoning, you first need to know something about the theory of self-regulation (Baumeister, 1998).

There are plenty of moments every day when I need to regulate myself. This happens when I get up in the morning instead of snoozing ‘just one last time’, during lunch when I choose that tasteless salad instead of the delicious brownie, and at my daily 3 o’clock dip when I force myself into reading that article instead of checking my mailbox every 2 minutes. All these actions have a clear goal (getting to work on time, looking after my health and getting my job done), but it takes effort to direct my behavior in a way that benefits that goal. I have to inhibit an attractive alternative that comes to mind first: obviously I rather want to snooze until noon, eat chocolate during lunch and waste my time chatting with my friends when I’m in my afternoon-dip. The self’s executive function can be looked upon as your behavioral conscience, inhibiting irrational desires and regulating behavior in a goal-directed manner.

For a passionate chocolate-eater who loves to sleep in - like myself - it is plausible that this executive functioning taps in to some sort of psychological resource, since it is so effortful to make smart choices all day. After I get home from a day of goal-directed behaviour, I usually plan to go to bed early to make the snoozing situation tomorrow easier to handle. But since I made smart choices all day, I cannot resist the invitation to go out ‘for just one drink’ with my friends. Schmeichel and Baumeister (2004) argued that regulating the self requires a central psychological resource, called self-regulatory strength, which refers to ‘the internal resources available to inhibit, override or alter responses.’ This strength is limited and varies as a function of will-power, stress and exhaustion. Consequently, after regulating yourself at a certain task, it gets harder to do so again at a following task. When a person has had many simultaneous demands of self-regulation, he or she will sometimes even fail at self-control regarding things that otherwise would be easy to succeed on (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996). Come to think of it, this probably explains why I stayed in that dull bar until 2 a.m. yesterday, listening to that whiny ex-classmate I don’t even like.

Tasks that require self-regulation are in general complex thinking tasks, like thoughtful reading comprehension or analytical reasoning. Easy tasks, like memorizing simple syllables, don’t require self-regulation. Most research regarding self-regulation has focused on the intrapersonal processes underlying this phenomenon (e.g., Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994; Higgins, 2000). This research typically uses a two-task paradigm, in which participants have to perform on an initial task that requires self-regulation versus a task that doesn’t require self-regulation. After completing either one of these tasks, all participants complete a second task that (also) requires self-regulation. There is overwhelming evidence for the assumption that participants who completed two tasks requiring self-regulation perform worse on the second task than participants who first completed a task that didn’t demand self-regulation.

Finkel et al. (2006) explored whether the interpersonal processes of high-maintenance interaction impair self-regulatory success on a follow-up task as well. To do so, they conducted several studies in which participants either experienced well-coordinated interaction with another person (low-maintenance interaction condition) versus poorly coordinated interaction with another person (high-maintenance interaction condition). After this interaction, the participants completed an individual task requiring self-regulation. In studies 2 and 3, this task was operationalized as task performance on the analytical section of the Graduated Record Examination (GRE); an entrance examination in United States-universities. 
In study 2, participants in the low-maintenance and the high-maintenance interaction condition had to work together with another person. They thought this other person was just another participant of the study, but actually the other was a confederate of the researchers. In the task the confederate was the Communicator, calling out the data listed on a sheet, while the participant had the function of Recorder, entering the data being called out as accurately as possible. In the low-maintenance interaction condition, the confederate delivered the data flawlessly and on a pleasant speed, to ensure a smooth interaction. In the high-maintenance interaction condition on the other hand, the confederate made errors while calling out the data and stayed out of sync with the Recorder (e.g. calling out the data while the participant is still typing). After this interaction the participant had to correctly answer as many of the 9 GRE questions in 10 minutes as possible. The results of the study supported the researchers’ main hypothesis, as the participants in the low-maintenance interaction conditions correctly answered 45% more GRE-questions than participants in the high-maintenance interaction condition.

Study 3 used the same design as study 2, but with a somewhat different paradigm. In this study, the participant worked together with a confederate as well, but this time they had to find their way through a maze by following the instructions of the confederate. Again, the participants who were given clear, easy instructions performed better on the GRE-questions than the participants who tried to follow the poorly given instructions.

Study 4 showed that this pattern could also be found when participants were asked to provide guidance or comfort to an emotionally distressed stranger, who was actually the confederate. In the high-maintenance condition (the responses of the confederate were pessimistic and non-receptive of the participants’ suggestions) the participants showed less self-regulation in a following task than in the low-maintenance condition (the confederate was less pessimistic and more receptive to the participants’ guidance). Interestingly, when the participants were asked whether they found the interaction with the other high- or low-maintaining, there was no difference between the conditions. This suggests that high-maintenance interaction can impair self-regulation, even when individuals don’t realise they experienced a high-maintenance interaction in the first place. 

Study 5 supported this assumption by showing the same pattern of results for participants interacting with a confederate who communicated non-verbally poorly or smoothly. In this study, the participants had really no idea that this interaction was high-maintenance, since it happened at an unconscious level. The culmination of these studies allowed the authors to conclude that high-maintenance interaction causes worse performance on individual tasks that demand self-regulation, like exam questions, and that this happens outside of conscious awareness.

So, how does this solve my dilemma concerning the perfect exam preparation? First of all, let’s assume that talking to a nerd is a form of high-maintenance interaction. This is probably caused by effortful communication and poor directions. Or, in another case, when you do understand the nerd’s explanations and you feel like you have a smooth interaction going on, there’s a considerable chance the nonverbal communication is poor. This could be due to the difference in communication skills between you and the nerd, or perhaps to the fact that he is sick of you taking advantage of his knowledge when you’ve never spoken to him before. Secondly, since an exam involves complex thinking, performing well on the task requires self-regulation. So, what to do in the minutes before you take that important maths exam you have studied well for but are still insecure about? Instead of talking to the smartest guy who has the stuff all figured out but is impossible to follow, just turn to the people you usually turn to: your friends. Having a complicated talk with the biggest nerd around will not only make you insecure about your own abilities, it might even result in a lower grade. Although your friends will probably not provide you with great final insights, they will make you perform at your full capacity, by bringing out the best in you.

References

Baumeister, R.F. (1998). The self. In D.T. Gilbert, S.T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (4th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 680-740). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Baumeister, R.F., & Heatherton, T.F. (1996). Self-regulatory failure: An overview. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 1-15.

Baumeister, R.F., Heatherton, T.F. & Tice, D.M. (1994). Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Finkel, E.J., Campbell, W.K., Brunell, A.B., Dalton, A.N., Scarbeck, S.J., Chartrand, T.L. (2006). High-maintenance interaction: Inefficient social coordination impairs self-regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 456-475.

Higgins, E.T. (2000). Making a good decision: Value from fit. American Psychologist, 55, 1217-1230.

Kelley, H.H., Holmes, J.G., Kerr, N.L., Reis, H.T., Rusbult, C.E., Van Lange, P.A.M. (2003). An Atlas of Interpersonal Situations. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schmeichel, B.J., & Baumeister, R.F. (2004). Self-regulatory strength. In R.F. Baumeister & K.D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications (pp. 84-98). New York: Guilford Press.