Abstract
IntroductionMedical training is consistently described as emotionally challenging. Students commonly encounter situations that are likely to trigger emotional reactions, but the influence of emotional reactions to these situations on learning is unclear. This experiment examined the effects of negative emotions on medical residents’ learning of scientific information.MethodsSixty first-year internal medicine residents (i.e. physicians in training to become specialists) at the São Paulo University Medical School were randomly assigned to watching a video clip either presenting an emotional (experimental group) or a neutral (control group) version of the same situation. Subsequently, all residents studied the same scientific text. Main outcome measurements were learning processes (inferred through study time and cognitive engagement) and outcomes (recall accuracy). Data were analyzed using chi-square and independent t‑tests.ResultsThe experimental group spent significantly less time (p < 0.001) studying the text and performed significantly worse on the free recall test (p < 0.001) than the control group.DiscussionNegative emotions decreased time invested in a learning task and the amount of knowledge gained from it, possibly because they automatically activated avoidance attitudes or captured part of the residents’ cognitive resources, hindering processing of the learning material. Future studies should further explore the underlying mechanisms of this effect and how it can be diminished.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s40037-019-00525-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Medical training is consistently described as emotionally challenging
The present study was an experiment consisting of three tasks: 1) a priming task, in which participants were randomly allocated to be exposed either to a video clip in an emotional version or to a video clip in a neutral version; 2) a learning task, in which all participants studied a medical text; time spent on the task and level of cognitive engagement were measured; 3) a testing task, in which participants’ learning was measured by a free recall test
There were no significant differences between participants assigned to the emotional and the control condition during the priming task: mean 25.8, 95% CI 25.01–26.58 vs mean 25.7, 95% CI 24.94–26.47, t(58) = 0.16, p = 0.88, respectively
Summary
Medical training is consistently described as emotionally challenging. Students commonly encounter situations that are likely to trigger emotional reactions, but the influence of emotional reactions to these situations on learning is unclear. It is reasonable to expect that residents, i.e. physicians in training to become specialists, would be confronted with these emotion-evoking situations as well They may even have to bear additional burdens, as residents often experience intimidating, undermining or humiliating behaviours, perpetrated most frequently by senior staff [3, 4], as a source of negative emotions. Such emotions are known to have deleterious consequences for residents’ wellbeing, [5] but there are reasons to suspect that emotions may negatively affect their learning [1]. Emotions have received little attention in medical education, and whether and how they influence learning remain unclear [6]
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