Choking Under Pressure in Competition and Psychological Intervention Approaches

Wang, Jin; Callahan, Douglas; Goldfine, Bernie

doi:10.1519/00126548-200310000-00013

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In addition, some athletes were easily influenced by negative external stimuli such as criticism from coaches, negative talk by teammates, opponents' perfect actions, audience noise, parental pressure, leaders' high expectations, and the like. According to Wang, Callahan, and Goldfine (2003), potential reasons for athletes losing control in a competition could be internal stimuli (distracters) such as negative thoughts, or external stimuli such as audience influence, pressure from coaches, or others. Therefore, learning to maintain and effectively manipulate their focus became a vital part of our psychological training strategies for the Chinese athletes.…”

Section: Methods 2: Teach Positive Cognitive Restructural Thinking Promentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological Consultations for Olympic Athletes' Peak Performance

Wang

Zhang

2015

Journal of Sport Psychology in Action

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Section: Methods 2: Teach Positive Cognitive Restructural Thinking Promentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological Consultations for Olympic Athletes' Peak Performance

Wang

Zhang

2015

Journal of Sport Psychology in Action

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Monkeys exhibit a paradoxical decrease in performance in high-stakes scenarios

Smoulder

Pavlovsky

Marino

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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In high-stakes situations, people sometimes exhibit a frustrating phenomenon known as “choking under pressure.” Usually, we perform better when the potential payoff is larger. However, once potential rewards get too high, performance paradoxically decreases—we “choke.” Why do we choke under pressure? An animal model of choking would facilitate the investigation of its neural basis. However, it could be that choking is a uniquely human occurrence. To determine whether animals also choke, we trained three rhesus monkeys to perform a difficult reaching task in which they knew in advance the amount of reward to be given upon successful completion. Like humans, monkeys performed worse when potential rewards were exceptionally valuable. Failures that occurred at the highest level of reward were due to overly cautious reaching, in line with the psychological theory that explicit monitoring of behavior leads to choking. Our results demonstrate that choking under pressure is not unique to humans, and thus, its neural basis might be conserved across species.

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Mental Strategies for Peak Performance

Wang¹

2006

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Choking Under Pressure in Competition and Psychological Intervention Approaches

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

Psychological Consultations for Olympic Athletes' Peak Performance

Psychological Consultations for Olympic Athletes' Peak Performance

Monkeys exhibit a paradoxical decrease in performance in high-stakes scenarios

Mental Strategies for Peak Performance

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