Jeremy Jamieson

Professor of Psychology University of Rochester

Rochester NY

Jeremy Jamieson is a national expert on stress, our responses to it, and how it's not always a bad thing.

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Spotlight

Nov 26, 2025

2 min

Taking the Reins of Holiday Stress

Ho-ho-ho and a bottle of Tums? From feeding a crowd to juggling travel and schedules and managing finances during a challenging economic time, the holidays can feel like a pressure cooker. But University of Rochester psychologist Jeremy Jamieson, one of the country’s leading researchers on stress, says the pressures of the season of giving (and giving and giving and giving some more) can be mitigated by mentally reframing the stress we feel. In other words, what matters is how we interpret our stress. Jamieson’s Social Stress Lab studies a technique called "stress reappraisal": the practice of reframing stress responses as helpful rather than harmful. According to researchers, people can learn to treat their signs of stress — the racing heart, the sweaty palms, the mental sense of urgency — as tools that prepare them to meet a challenge rather than a sign that they’re falling apart. “Stress reappraisal isn’t about calming down or shutting stress off,” Jamieson says. “It’s about changing the meaning of your stress response. If you view the demands as something you can handle, your body shifts into a challenge state, which is a more adaptive, productive kind of stress.” The research behind this approach has grown considerably. In one of Jamieson’s studies, published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the Social Stress Lab trained community college students to reinterpret stress as a resource. The results were striking: students experienced less anxiety, performed better on exams, procrastinated less, were more likely to stay enrolled, and approached academic challenges with healthier physiological responses. Newer findings from the lab also suggest that stress reframing can support people facing workplace pressures, caregiving responsibilities, and major life transitions. In short, stress isn’t the enemy of our well-being during the holidays. The real culprit is believing stress is dangerous. Jamieson is available for interviews and can explain how people can use stress reappraisal strategies to navigate holiday pressures — and other high-demand moments — with more confidence, better health, and better outcomes. Click on his profile to connect with him.

Sep 2, 2025

1 min

Back-to-school stress? Here’s how it can be a good thing.

As America heads back to school, the renewed whirlwind of expectations for students and parents — from demanding coursework to social dynamics and balancing pick-up-and-drop-off schedules — can trigger anxiety for students and parents alike. Jeremy Jamieson, associate professor of psychology who leads the University of Rochester’s Social Stress Lab, studies how social stressors affect decisions, emotion, and achievement and how embracing, rather than battling, those reactions can boost resilience. “We’re not passive receivers of stress,” Jamieson told National Public Radio last year. “We’re active agents in actually making our own stress response.” Jamieson’s research reveals that stress can be helpful when it is reframed as a mobilizer of energy and focus. In a study of students preparing for the GRE, for instance, those who were primed to view physical stress symptoms (like a racing heart) as beneficial outperformed their peers who didn’t reframe those symptoms. As students confront the fall’s demands, a simple shift in mindset can make all the difference. Jamieson’s research has so many practical applications that he is regularly sought out by media outlets on a wide variety of topics. In the last year, he has talked to Golf Digest about battling the “yips,” to The Atlantic about the rise of “anxiety-inducing” television, and to New York Magazine about the stress some people feel when talking on the phone. He is available to discuss his research and to help explain and navigate seasonal pressures. Connect with him by clicking on his profile.

Areas of Expertise

Good Stress

Social Anxiety

Positive Stress

Stress Regulation

Stress

Stress Responses

Stress and Teens

Anxiety

Stress and Public Speaking

Media

Social

Biography

Jeremy Jamieson serves as the principal investigator of the Social Stress Lab at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on social stress and decision making, emotion regulation, and risk and uncertainty.

The primary focus of Jamieson's work seeks to understand how stress impacts decisions, emotions, and performance. He is particularly interested in using physiological indices of bodily and mental states to delve into the mechanisms underlying the effects of stress on downstream outcomes. Jamieson is also interested in studying emotion regulation. His research in this area demonstrates that altering appraisals of stress and anxiety can go a long ways towards improving physiological and cognitive outcomes.

Education

Colby College

B.A.

Psychology

2004

Northeastern University

Ph.D.

Social Psychology

2004

Affiliations

American Educational Research Association
Association for Psychological Science
Carnegie Foundation, Alpha-Lab Research Network
Society for Affective Science
Society for Experimental Social Psychology
Society for Personality & Social Psychology

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Selected Media Appearances

Comfort TV Is Overrated Many of today’s most talked-about shows have something in common: They are wildly anxiety-inducing.

The Atlantic print

2025-07-30

“Our minds create what is real and what isn’t real to our stress systems,” Jeremy Jamieson, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester, told me. When a viewer engages intimately with the material, he added, “they could be having essentially a stress response when they’re not actually doing anything stressful.”

We've Been Practicing All Wrong

Australian Golf Digest online

2025-07-01

“If you talk to people in special forces, they’re trying to make that training as close to the actual event as possible,” May says. “They’re adamant that under pressure, you only fall to the level of training.”

Of course, the idea isn’t to make a typical short-game session as miserable as boot camp. A common misconception when talking about “stressful practice” is that stress can only be unpleasant. “When people say stress, they often mean distress,” says Dr. Jeremy Jamieson, who oversees the Social Stress Lab at the University of Rochester. “People rarely use the word stress in a way that’s positive. That’s just the way our culture works. Athletes are one of the few groups that get it. They understand, ‘Oh, yeah, I need to be on and activated to do anything well.’”

By Jamieson’s definition, stress is a signal to the body to pay closer attention, which in competition, is something golfers not only tolerate but need.

Stress isn't all bad. Here's when it can help

NPR radio

2024-10-21

Your stress response can be your body’s way of preparing to rise to a challenge, explains Jeremy Jamieson, a psychologist at the University of Rochester. He studies how stress responses can be “optimized.”

“We’re not passive receivers of stress,” Jamieson explains. “We’re active agents in actually making our own stress response.”