Effects of warning of impending time pressure on adaptation and performance

Abstract

High time pressure is a common issue encountered by professionals such as auditors, lawyers and engineers. This is a well-recognised problem faced by them as they often have to meet tight deadlines in the course of their work, resulting in substandard

quality of performance. The current study examined i) the effects of time pressure on performance, and ii) warning of impending high time pressure on adaptation and performance.

From our experiment, results showed that subjects under low time pressure performed better than those under high time pressure. This is in line with the findings of past studies that showed that high time pressure has a detrimental effect on performance.

Our experiment also examined the effects of warning of impending high time pressure on subjects. Interestingly, the results indicated that by giving adequate warning of impending high time pressure, performance improved significantly. Thus, subjects facing the same high time pressure but given the warning must have adapted in some ways to perform better.