Featured Post from University of Rochester

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

University of Rochester psychologist Jeremy Jamieson shows how reappraising stress can turn back-to-school jitters into performance fuel.

Sep 2, 2025

1 min

Jeremy Jamieson

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.


CaptionResizeWrap TextRemove

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.



Connect with:
Jeremy Jamieson

Jeremy Jamieson

Associate Professor

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

Good StressSocial AnxietyPositive StressStress RegulationStress

You might also like...

Check out some other posts from University of Rochester

2 min

Don't let brain bias tank your fantasy football season

The National Football League season kicks off this week and that means millions of fantasy football coaches are already overthinking their lineups. But before they blame a bad draft slot or a fluke injury for bombing from one week to the next, they might want to look in the mirror and give their head a shake. Renee Miller, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, studies cognitive biases and literally wrote the book on bias in fantasy sports. She plays fantasy football, too. She warns that our brains are wired to interpret fantasy football results in ways that are suboptimal and illogical. “Biased thinking occurs in everyday life and work, and in fantasy sports,” Miller says. “Through the course of a season, you can see a full range of the ways cognitive bias affects a person’s weekly fantasy matchups.” Here’s the good news: Miller says we can untangle those wires if we know what to look for. Among the biggest culprits are what Miller calls “the endowment effect” (overvaluing and clinging to players you drafted high), “recency bias” (falling in love with last week’s star), and “confirmation bias” (cherry-picking stats that support what you already believe). But especially beware of Week One. Thanks to the “primacy effect,” those games early in the season loom larger in memory than later ones. One hot debut or a disappointing flop can warp a coach’s thinking for weeks. The result? Lineups driven more by emotion than logic — and possibly a lot of pick sixes. Biases aren’t all bad, though. Sometimes instincts pay off. First impressions and recent performances sometimes hold fast. But the best fantasy players, Miller says, know when to slow down and think systematically. They stay skeptical, challenge their gut reactions, and accept that they’ll be wrong sometimes. So before you rage-drop that underperforming wide receiver or crown your Week One sleeper a superstar, remember, the smartest move might be to take a look in the mirror and give your head a shake. Miller is available for interviews for journalists covering fantasy sports. Connect with her by clicking on her profile.

2 min

In an age of fast-moving misinformation, our expert teaches students how to spot what’s credible

As the new academic year begins, and at a time when misinformation often travels faster than facts, University of Rochester’s Kevin Meuwissen offers educators and young learners clarity and practical strategies for identifying credible sources. As an associate professor and chair of teaching and curriculum at the Warner School of Education and Human Development, Meuwissen focuses on how children and teens learn about politics and history — and how they can be taught to critically evaluate what they consume. “Young people pay close attention to who’s been consistently accurate,” he says. “They’re more likely to trust someone over time if their information holds up.” To empower students in our complex information environment, Meuwissen champions the so-called SIFT method — an easy-to-remember acronym and evidence-based toolkit that breaks down like this: • Stop! Pause before reacting or sharing • Investigate the source • Find better coverage • Trace claims back to their origin He also warns about how emotional framing, AI-generated visuals, deep fakes, and repeated exposure can distort judgment through the illusory truth effect — making misinformation feel believable even when it isn’t. His "Ever Wonder: How Can You Tell If A Source Is Credible?" video  is a handy teaching tool.  Meuwissen and his colleagues encourage teachers grappling with resistance over topics like climate science to consider not just evidence depth, but also students’ identities — political, cultural, and otherwise — when designing lessons. His approach emphasizes building trust, modeling thoughtful verification, and nurturing classroom norms rooted in accuracy — traits essential for forming discerning digital citizens. Kevin Meuwissen is available for interviews about identifying misinformation. He can be contacted through Warner School of Education Director of Communications Theresa Danylak at tdanylak@warner.rochester.edu.

2 min

As Trump rolls back regulations, this expert examines the costs of compliance

President Donald Trump has signaled a push to scale back federal regulation across a wide range of industries, reigniting a national debate over the costs and benefits of government rules. For Joseph Kalmenovitz, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School who studies the economics of regulation, the moment underscores the importance of understanding not just what regulations do — but how much they cost. Kalmenovitz, who combines legal training with cutting-edge empirical methods, has developed innovative ways to measure regulatory intensity. His research shows how compliance requirements translate into millions of additional hours of paperwork for firms — costs that often fall outside public view. A recent Bloomberg Law article cited his work in explaining how Wall Street alone devotes an estimated 51 million extra hours each year to compliance since the Great Financial Crisis. Beyond tallying hours, Kalmenovitz’s studies also explore how overlapping rules across agencies — what he calls “regulatory fragmentation” — can stifle productivity, profitability, and growth, especially for smaller firms. His long-term aim is to provide evidence-based insights that can guide smarter rulemaking in Washington. “The dream is that people will take insights from my work and use them to improve the way regulation is conceived,” he told Simon Business Magazine. Kalmenovitz is a leading voice in translating data into meaningful insights about the hidden costs and design of regulation whose work has been published in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, and the Journal of Law and Economics. He is available for interviews and can be contacted through his profile.

View all posts
Powered by