Choking under pressure: self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance.

@article{Baumeister1984ChokingUP,
  title={Choking under pressure: self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance.},
  author={Roy F. Baumeister},
  journal={Journal of personality and social psychology},
  year={1984},
  volume={46 3},
  pages={
          610-20
        }
}
  • R. Baumeister
  • Published 1 March 1984
  • Psychology
  • Journal of personality and social psychology
Choking under pressure is defined as performance decrements under circumstances that increase the importance of good or improved performance. A model for choking on coordination and skill tasks is proposed, holding that the pressure increases the conscious attention to the performer's own process of performance and that this increased conscious attention disrupts the automatic or overlearned nature of the execution. Six experiments provided data consistent with this model. Three studies showed… 
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1,408 Citations
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Background Citations
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Methods Citations
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Results Citations
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1,408 Citations

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…

Attentional Processes and Choking under Pressure

TLDR
The findings suggest that attentional shifts during choking can be related to specific aspects of movement execution, which are important in conscious movement control before execution becomes automated through practice.

Choking under pressure: the neuropsychological mechanisms of incentive-induced performance decrements

TLDR
This review aims to identify psychological factors that determine choking and the neural underpinnings of these processes, and insights into how incentives influence performance may aid engineering training regimens and interventions that equip individuals to better handle high-stakes-induced psychological stress, and to thrive under stress.

Thinking about Choking? Attentional Processes and Paradoxical Performance

TLDR
Results show that pressure caused choking when participants were not distracted and had not been adapted to self awareness and this effect was attenuated when cognitive load was increased or when self-awareness adaptation had occurred.

Self-Consciousness and Performance Decrements Within a Sporting Context

TLDR
Baumeister’s (1984) predicted negative correlation between self-consciousness and choking in the context of basketball free-throw shooting is tested, which indicates that training performance was superior to competition performance (i.e., that choking Occurred).

Limiting motor skill knowledge via incidental training protects against choking under pressure

TLDR
It is shown that only participants who train and perform with premovement cues that allowed for preparatory movement planning choke under pressure due to large monetary incentives, and that this effect is independent of the level of skill attained.

On the fragility of skilled performance: what governs choking under pressure?

TLDR
Findings support explicit monitoring theories of choking and the popular but infrequently tested belief that attending to proceduralized skills hurts performance.

Choking under pressure: multiple routes to skill failure.

TLDR
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.

Self-Consciousness, Self-presentation, and Performance Under Pressure: Who Chokes, and When?

Choking under pressure by persons low and high in self-consciousness was examined as a function of two sources of performance pressure: audience and performance feedback. Subjects competed with an…

Choking on the Money

TLDR
Conurrent functional magnetic resonance imaging revealed that increased activity in ventral midbrain, a brain area associated with incentive motivation and basic reward responding, correlated with both reduced number of captures and increased number of near-misses associated with imminent high rewards.
...

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