# Writing your worries may increase working memory capacity

Because Negative thoughts consumes working memory capacity, writing them down may free up our capacity. See reference for the study about this.

Writing allows us to deliberately forget.


# References

Goldstein, Cognitive Psychology (p. 159).

But the most important result is the decrease in errors in the writing group. Ramirez and Beilock (2011) suggest that participants worried less while taking the test because they had expressed their worries in writing before taking the test. Supporting this idea is that writing about something unrelated to the test had no effect-performance was the same as the control group. Thus, one simple procedure-writing about your worries about a test just. Before you take it-could free up working memory capacity that could possibly be needed to do well in the test, especially if the test involves using your working memory.