A review of paradoxical performance effects: Choking under pressure in sports and mental tests

Paradoxical performance effects (‘choking under pressure’) are defined as the occurrence of inferior performance despite striving and incentives for superior performance. Experimental demonstrations of these effects on tasks analogous to athletic performance and the theories that may explain them are reviewed. At present, attentional theories seem to offer the most complete explanation of the processes underlying paradoxical performance effects. In particular, choking may result from distraction or from the interference of self-focused attention with the execution of automatic responses. Experimental findings of paradoxical performance decrements are associated with four pressure variables: audience presence, competition, performance-contingent rewards and punishments, and ego relevance of the task. The mediating factors of task complexity, expectancies, and individual differences are discussed.     

Choking under the pressure of a positive stereotype: gender identification and self-consciousness moderate men's math test performance

Choking under pressure occurs when an individual underperforms due to situational pressure. The present study examined whether being the target of a positive social stereotype regarding math ability causes choking among men. Gender identification and self-consciousness were hypothesized to moderate the effect of math-gender stereotypes on men's math test performance. Men high in self-consciousness but low in gender identification significantly underperformed when exposed to gender-relevant test instructions. No significant effects were found under a gender-irrelevant condition. These findings are discussed in the contexts of research on stereotype threat, stereotype lift, and choking under pressure.     

Choking under pressure and working memory capacity: When performance pressure reduces fluid intelligence

Recent findings (Beilock & Carr, 2005) have demonstrated that only individuals with a high working memory capacity (WMC) “choke under pressure” on math problems with high working memory demands. This suggests that performance pressure hinders those who are the most qualified to succeed, because it consumes the WMC they usually rely on to achieve superior performance. This puts into question the use of performance in high-pressure situations as a means of distinguishing individuals with lesser or greater WMC potentials. While addressing several limitations of past research, we offer evidence that such choking (1) occurs only in individuals with high WMC, because of their anxiety-ridden perceptions of high-stakes situations, and (2) is not confined to tasks involving acquired skills and knowledge, but encompasses fluid reasoning abilities or intelligence (Gf). These findings have strong implications for assessments of people’s intellectual capacities in academic, clinical, work, and research settings.     

Choking and excelling under pressure

Decrements in performance on cognitive tasks resulting from pressure to perform (i.e., choking) are thought to be caused by interference with the ability to use explicit strategies (the distraction theory). This view suggests that pressure should improve performance on tasks for which explicit strategies hamper performance. This hypothesis was tested by giving subjects one of two nearly identical learning tasks, a task that required learning a rule or one that required using a holistic information-integration strategy. Explicit rule use would hurt performance in the latter task. As predicted by the distraction theory, pressure decreased performance on the rule-based task but enhanced performance on the information-integration task.     

An effort based analysis of the paradoxical effects of incentives on decision‐aided performance

This study examines the effect of incentives on decision‐aided performance. In particular, the study provides further insight into whether, when, and how incentives affect task performance in the presence of decision aids by (1) replicating previous research showing the negative effects of incentives on performance; (2) investigating whether this effect generalizes to a more realistic scenario in which decision makers have access to additional contextual information not captured by the decision aid; and (3) applying an effort‐based framework to explain the link between incentives and performance. In contrast to the findings of prior research, our study shows that incentives do not necessarily decrease performance in the presence of decision aids. Rather, we demonstrate that the effect of incentives on decision‐aided performance depends on other contextual factors such as the absence or presence of additional contextual information. By further specifying the conditions under which incentives result in increases or decreases to decision‐aided task performance, our results have implications for both future research and the design of incentive systems in practice. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Choking under pressure: multiple routes to skill failure

Poor performance in pressure-filled situations, or "choking under pressure," has largely been explained by two different classes of theories. Distraction theories propose that choking occurs because attention needed to perform the task at hand is coopted by task-irrelevant thoughts and worries. Explicit monitoring theories claim essentially the opposite-that pressure prompts individuals to attend closely to skill processes in a manner that disrupts execution. Although both mechanisms have been shown to occur in certain contexts, it is unclear when distraction and/or explicit monitoring will ultimately impact performance. The authors propose that aspects of the pressure situation itself can lead to distraction and/or explicit monitoring, differentially harming skills that rely more or less on working memory and attentional control. In Experiments 1-2, it is shown that pressure that induces distraction (involving performance-contingent outcomes) hurts rule-based category learning heavily dependent on attentional control. In contrast, pressure that induces explicit monitoring of performance (monitoring by others) hurts information-integration category learning thought to run best without heavy demands on working memory and attentional control. In Experiment 3, the authors leverage knowledge about how specific types of pressure impact performance to design interventions to eliminate choking. Finally, in Experiment 4, the selective effects of monitoring-pressure are replicated in a different procedural-based task: the serial reaction time task. Skill failure (and success) depends in part on how the performance environment influences attention and the extent to which skill execution depends on explicit attentional control.     

Choking under pressure: The role of fear of negative evaluation

Objective

Conceptual models and predictors of choking under pressure (i.e., choking) have been proposed, but the role of fear of negative evaluation remains largely unknown. The purpose of the current study was to determine the degree to which fear of negative evaluation (FNE) may predispose athletes to choking.

Design and method

138 Experienced basketball players participated in a pre-selection stage, which involved completing a set of questionnaires that included the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation-II (BFNE-II) questionnaire. Based on the scores from the BFNE-II, 34 athletes, categorized as either low- or high-FNE, were selected to perform basketball shots from five different areas of the court under low- and high-pressure phases. Shooting performance was evaluated based on the total number of successful shots out of 50 attempts.

Results

Results indicated that the high-FNE athletes displayed a significant increase in anxiety and a significant decrease in performance from low- to high-pressure phases. The low-FNE group exhibited only minimal changes in anxiety throughout the study and was able to maintain performance under pressure. Further mediation analysis investigating significant difference in performance between FNE groups within the high-pressure phase indicated that that cognitive anxiety was a partial mediator between FNE group and performance, but somatic anxiety was not.

Conclusions

Findings extend the existing choking literature by providing empirical support for the role of FNE in the context of the self-presentation model of choking.     

The effects of sleep deprivation and incentives on human performance

Summary This study explores whether KR (knowledge of results) and reward compensate for the negative joint effects of sleep deprivation and signal degradation in a choice-reaction task. The negative effect of signal degradation on performance was aggravated by sleep loss and time-on-task, whereas KR improved performance, especially when signals were degraded. Reward changed the effects of time-on-task owing to lack of sleep. Performance was also improved by a brief task interruption after 30 minutes' work, with 5 more minutes to go. These results can be interpreted in terms of the performance model of Sanders (1983), which links energetic mechanisms to stages of information processing. A lack of energetic supply from the arousal mechanism to perceptual processing, induced by signal degradation, sleep deprivation, and time-on-task, was effectively counteracted by KR: KR enables the mobilization of effort to compensate for this lack of arousal. The relation between reward and KR is not yet clear. The interruption effect suggests that the influence of time-on-task is not due to loss of arousal, but causes a reallocation of resources by effort.     

TV cameras,public self-consciousness,and mock juror performance

In Chandler v. Florida (1981), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the presence of television cameras in the courtroom does not violate a defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial. Since then, several states have expanded their TV coverage rights, and the controversy has intensified. The present study tested opponents' argument that TV cameras distract jurors, thereby reducing their reliance on evidence in the decision-making process. Fifty-one community adults watched a 95-min videotape of a civil trial in the presence or absence of a camera. No effects were obtained on verdicts, awards, or a series of self-report measures. The camera did impair subjects' recall of the evidence, but this effect was dually limited—(a) consistent with an adaptation hypothesis, an initially strong distractive effect gradually diminished, resulting in a net post-trial loss of information that was not statistically significant, and (b) consistent with an individual differences hypothesis, the camera impaired the recall of subjects who were low but not high in dispositional public self-consciousness. These findings were discussed in terms of their practical implications for courtroom management and their contribution to the self-awareness literature.     

The relationship of motive disposition and situational incentives to individual differences in choking under pressure

Motive disposition theory posits that individuals exhibit stable differences in their achievement, affiliation, and power motives – shaping their capacity to perceive performance, social affiliative, or competitive contexts as rewarding. Whereas this approach has been employed in research on individual differences in motor performance, it has not been considered in predicting individual differences in choking under pressure. Typical pressure manipulations often use competitive or team settings which also constitute prime examples of power and affiliation incentives. Consequently, we hypothesized participants' affiliation (vs. power) motive to be related to golf putting performance in team (vs. competitive) settings. In addition, due to the performance feedback provided by the task, it should also generally appeal to participants high in achievement motivation. Specifically, after a familiarization phase a total of 115 participants completed a baseline assessment of golf putting performance, followed by an experimental block manipulating the task's incentives (competition, team, control) between participants. Analysis of participants' previously assessed motives revealed that both participants' affiliation and achievement motive were positively related to performance (variable error) under pressure. No effects emerged for the power motive. These findings highlight the role of personality differences in predicting motor performance variability in pressure situations. We discuss the specific contributions of projective and self-report motive measures and touch upon possible avenues for coaches and practitioners to counter choking effects.     

The effects of self-focused attention, performance demand, and dispositional sexual self-consciousness on sexual arousal of sexually functional and dysfunctional men

Sexually functional (N=26) and sexually dysfunctional heterosexual men with psychogenic erectile disorder (N=23) viewed two sexually explicit videos. Performance demand was manipulated through verbal instruction that a substantial genital response was to be expected from the videos. Self-focused attention was manipulated by introducing a camera pointed at the participant. Dispositional self-consciousness was assessed by questionnaire. Performance demand was found to independently inhibit the genital response. No main effect of self-focus was found. Self-focus inhibited genital response in men scoring high on general and sexual self-consciousness traits, whereas it enhanced penile tumescence in low self-conscious men. Inhibition effects were found in both volunteers and patients. No interaction effects of performance demand and self-focus were found. Subjective sexual arousal in sexually functional men was highest in the self-focus condition. In sexually dysfunctional men, subjective sexual response proved dependent on locus of attention as well as presentation order.     

Differential effects of noise and incentives on learning.

Three experiments are reported. In the first, monetary incentives improved the learning of nonsense words in response to colours only when the test order was the same as presentation order. In the second, incentives increased the recall of spatial location which served as an additional retrieval cue for nonsense words. In the third, noise was used to manipulate arousal. Noise during learning produced a significant decline in recall of locations for nonsense words. The results suggest that incentives increase attentional capacity, while noise does not. Previous results showing that noise increases the use of order cues are discussed and it is suggested that noise induces a type of learning which depends on order cues. Existing hypotheses about the nature of this process are noted but it is argued that further work is needed to select between them.     

Stereotyping and attitudinal effects under time pressure

This paper reports an experiment in which the influence of time pressure, the social category of the target person, and emotional responses on impression formation and recognition memory was studied. It was hypothesized that under time pressure, subjects using their stereotype would process information about an outgroup target more easily than information about an ingroup target, would judge these targets more differentially, and would base their judgments of the outgroup target more on their attitudes than in a condition without time pressure. These hypotheses were to a large extent sustained. Results are discussed in terms of current models of impression formation and attitude functioning.     

The effects of private self-consciousness and perspective taking on satisfaction in close relationships

We extended the scope of recent studies in which self-awareness and perspective taking have been used as predictors of social competence or adjustment: We analyzed their influence on the satisfaction experienced in monogamous, heterosexual relationships. Members of 131 couples answered questions concerning themselves and their relationships. We predicted that individual differences in private self-consciousness would be positively related to relationship satisfaction because of the greater self-disclosure resulting from that heightened self-attention. Second, we predicted that individual differences in perspective taking would foster relationship satisfaction, independent of any influence of self-disclosure. Both expectations were confirmed. Scores on the private self-consciousness scale were predictive of reported self-disclosure, and self-disclosure was predictive of satisfaction in the relationship. Furthermore, once the influence of self-disclosure was removed, no effect of self-consciousness on satisfaction remained. In contrast, after disclosure was controlled, perspective-taking scores were significantly related to satisfaction and were in fact unrelated to disclosure at all. These findings indicate that two personality characteristics having to do with habitual attention to behavioral tendencies, to emotions, and to motivations significantly enhance the quality of close heterosexual relationships in different ways. Results are discussed in terms of current theory in the related fields.     

More on the fragility of performance: choking under pressure in mathematical problem solving

In 3 experiments, the authors examined mathematical problem solving performance under pressure. In Experiment 1, pressure harmed performance on only unpracticed problems with heavy working memory demands. In Experiment 2, such high-demand problems were practiced until their answers were directly retrieved from memory. This eliminated choking under pressure. Experiment 3 dissociated practice on particular problems from practice on the solution algorithm by imposing a high-pressure test on problems practiced 1, 2, or 50 times each. Infrequently practiced high-demand problems were still performed poorly under pressure, whereas problems practiced 50 times each were not. These findings support distraction theories of choking in math, which contrasts with considerable evidence for explicit monitoring theories of choking in sensorimotor skills. This contrast suggests a skill taxonomy based on real-time control structures.