It’s not just for vanity’s sake: A few “likes” or encouraging Facebook messages could give you the edge at your next job interview or big test.

In a new study by from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, college students with test-taking anxiety scored higher on exams after getting “likes” or reading supportive comments on social media.

About 40 percent of students suffer from test anxiety, according to the study. It goes beyond a few butterflies in the stomach: Test anxiety is associated with lower exam scores and grade-point averages, especially when open-ended test questions come into play. When students feel less anxious about tests, their scores, GPAs and task performance improve.

Researchers studied the anxiety levels of 88 students, and had some ask their social-media networks for encouraging messages and “likes” on their pages. Those thumbs-upped scholars performed 21 percent better than those who didn’t get any love on social media.

Students aren’t the only benefactors of this research. Anyone worried about a job interview or a big hurdle at work could alleviate their anxiety by asking for a few words of encouragement on Facebook, the study’s authors wrote.

Just one catch: What students gained in test points, they lost in street cred. Those who had to ask for “likes” on social media felt pretty uncool, wrote lead author Robert Deloatch, a graduate student in computer science at the university.

“All of them were uncomfortable with soliciting support from their online friends,” Deloatch said in a statement, “perceiving such posts as ‘attention seeking’ and ‘out of place.’ ”

So don’t leave your anxious friends hanging before a big day: A little “like” goes a long way.