Which statement best describes the relationship between distress and performance?

• A. Distress enhances performance
• B. Distress has no impact on performance
• C. Distress hinders performance
• D. Distress guarantees errors

Answer: (C)

Distress is negative stress that raises arousal beyond what most tasks need for peak performance. When you’re distressed, you’re more likely to have scattered attention, overwhelmed working memory, and slower reaction times, which makes mistakes or slow responses more likely. The general pattern is that performance drops as distress increases, especially for more complex tasks, because the extra arousal disrupts focus and cognitive processing. So, distress hinders performance. It’s not typically beneficial, and it doesn’t guarantee errors, but the overall relationship is that distress reduces how well you perform.