How to stay calm under pressure Noa Kageyama and PenPen Chen
Your favorite athlete
closes in for a victorious win.
The crowd holds its breath,
and, at the crucial moment,
she misses the shot.
That competitor just experienced
the phenomenon known as “choking,”
where despite months,
even years, of practice,
a person fails right when it matters most.
Choking is common in sports,
where performance often occurs
under intense pressure
and depends on key moments.
And yet, performance anxiety
also haunts public speakers,
contestants in spelling bees,
and even world-famous musicians.
Most people intuitively
blame it on their nerves,
but why does being nervous
undermine expert performance?
There are two sets of theories,
which both say that primarily, choking
under pressure boils down to focus.
First, there are the distraction theories.
These suggest that performance suffers
when the mind is preoccupied
with worries, doubts, or fears,
instead of focusing its attention
on performing the task at hand.
When relevant and irrelevant thoughts
compete for the same attention,
something has to give.
The brain can only process
so much information at once.
Tasks that challenge working memory,
the mental “scratch pad” we use
to temporarily store phone numbers
and grocery lists,
are especially vulnerable to pressure.
In a 2004 study,
a group of university students
were asked to perform math problems,
some easy, others more complex
and memory-intensive.
Half the students completed both problem
types with nothing at stake,
while the others completed them
when calm and under pressure.
While everyone did well
on the easy problems,
those who were stressed
performed worse
on the more difficult,
memory-intensive tasks.
Explicit monitoring theories make up
the second group of explanations
for choking under pressure.
They’re concerned with how pressure
can cause people to overanalyze
the task at hand.
Here, the logic goes that
once a skill becomes automatic,
thinking about its precise mechanics
interferes with your ability to do it.
Tasks we do unconsciously seem to be
most vulnerable to this kind of choking.
A study on competitive golfers compared
their performance
when instructed to simply focus on
putting as accurately as possible,
versus when they were primed
to be acutely aware
of the mechanics of their putting stroke.
Golfers usually perform
this action subconsciously,
so those who suddenly tuned in
to the precise details of their own moves
also became worse
at making accurate shots.
Choking may not be inevitable
for everyone though.
Research suggests that some are
more susceptible than others,
especially those who are self-conscious,
anxious,
and afraid of being judged
negatively by others.
So, how can we avoid choking
when it really counts?
First, it helps to practice
under stressful conditions.
In a study on expert dart players,
researchers found that those
who hadn’t practiced under stress
performed worse when anxious,
compared to those who had
become accustomed to pressure.
Secondly, many performers extol the
virtues of a pre-performance routine,
whether it’s taking a few deep breaths,
repeating a cue word,
or doing a rhythmic sequence of movements.
Studies on golfing, bowling,
and water polo
find that short rituals can lead
to more consistent
and accurate performance under pressure.
And thirdly, researchers have shown
that having an external focus
on the ultimate goal
works better than an internal focus,
where someone is tuned into the mechanics
of what they’re doing.
A study of experienced golfers revealed
that those who hit chip shots
while focused on the flight of the ball
performed significantly better than those
who focused on the motion of their arms.
So, perhaps we can modify
that age-old saying:
practice,
under pressure,
with focus,
and with that glorious end goal in sight,
makes perfect.