Choke!

A psychologist’s new look at why we choke under pressure, and what we can do about it

By Chris Berdik, Boston Globe, October 10, 2010

" ... In her new book, ”Choke” (Free Press, September 2010), Beilock argues that doing well under pressure begins with understanding the demands that different types of performance make on the brain. For example, success on a math exam or a business presentation requires sustained focus, and worries can distract us. By contrast, athletes and musicians do better when they let their well-practiced skills run on autopilot. Too much focus can trip them up. In that case, when the stakes are high, a little distraction could be helpful.

Beilock sees choking at work beyond the bright lights and cheering crowds. She sees it lurking behind everything from plane crashes to racial achievement gaps in education to the relative lack of women pursuing math and science careers.

To learn more about choking under pressure, Ideas reached Beilock by phone at her Chicago office, told her the clock was ticking, and demanded answers.

IDEAS: Are some people natural born chokers?

BEILOCK: I wouldn’t go that far. But there are traits that can make people more susceptible to poor performance in pressure situations. Surprisingly, one is having a lot of working memory, what I call cognitive horsepower.

Doing academic tasks in our lab, we’ve found that people with the most thinking and reasoning power report the same levels of stress as people with lower cognitive horsepower, and they show similar stress-hormone levels, but they lose the most in their performance when we raise the stakes and up the pressure. That’s because they are used to relying on their superior thinking and reasoning power for demanding academic tests, instead of using shortcuts, and that working memory gets zapped by pressure and worry. ..."

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