Data and sample

This research was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of George Mason University and University of Colorado Colorado Springs. It was also approved by the US Army Research Institute Human Research Protection Official Review. Undergraduate students from a large, public university located in the eastern U.S. participated in this study and received compensation in the form of course credit and/or a monetary reward. Participants were informed that there was no foreseeable risk associated with their participation and they were free to withdraw at any time. All participants provided informed consent before participating. A total of 185 complete responses (those who filled out all of the surveys as described next) were used in the analyses. The average age of participants was 21.20 (SD = 2.90), and 62.73% of participants were female. The racial and ethnic composition of the sample was 34.12% White, 37.83% Asian, and 8.64% Black/African American, with the remainder of the sample representing other groups.

Online surveys were administered across multiple time points. In the first survey, participants anticipated how they would feel while studying for an upcoming exam that was at least a week away. Participants made forecasts about specific study episodes they had planned that were within three days of the upcoming exam. Three (versus more) days were chosen given evidence that most studying for college exams occurs in the days immediately preceding the exams [32]. Because variables such as degree of familiarity with the exam format potentially could influence performance on the first exam for a given course, participants were asked to provide information for exams other than their first one in that course. In the second set of surveys, participants reported experienced affect and completed measures of goal-directed behaviors while studying for the exam.