Why We Choke Under Pressure—Plus How to Stop
Choking under pressure happens to everyone from professional athletes to ten-year-olds taking a math test. Even socially awkward moments have their roots in choking, recent research shows. This week on the Savvy Psychologist, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen reveals why we choke and how to come through in the clutch.
Pulling off a great performance under pressure is one of the biggest highs out there—after all, they say a diamond is just coal that did well under pressure.
The opposite—choking—is usually a sports term. It’s missing the extra point after the touchdown, blowing your putt, or watching your free throw roll around the rim and then sadly drop off.
Entire teams can choke—for example, the 2004 Yankees. (“There’s no way the Red Sox will come back to win four in a row. That’s impossible.”) And, to be fair, there’s also the 1986 Red Sox (although the beleaguered Bill Buckner was welcomed home to a standing ovation when he threw out the first pitch at the 2008 home opener).
But choking doesn’t just happen to athletes. Choking happens to school kids with test anxiety, musicians auditioning in front of stone-faced judges, and actors trying out for a breakout role.
And it’s not just objectively pressure-filled situations, it’s anytime you psych yourself out.
For instance, a recent study found that people who are lonely tend to choke under self-imposed social pressure. When we feel desperate to connect, we end up spilling our drink or tripping over our feet, and not in an adorable Jennifer Lawrence kind of way.
Therefore, this week, we’ll talk about why we choke and 4 ways to give yourself a psychological Heimlich maneuver.
Why We Choke Under Pressure
Choking is defined the delivery of a poor performance given one’s skill level, especially in a high pressure situation. Why does it happen? That depends opens PDF file on the task at hand.
Choke Type #1: We get distracted by our own worry.
The first kind of choking happens when we need to think our way through a task—high-stakes college aptitude tests, an interview for a your dream job, even the fifth-grade spelling bee. In this kind of task, you rely on your working memory to make decisions and put forth your best. Here, choking happens when we get distracted by our own worries. Thoughts of failure eat up our bandwidth and interrupt our thinking, leaving less working memory to get it done.
Choke Type #2: We overthink things.
The second kind of choking occurs in situations that call for muscle memory, or what researchers call procedural memory. Sinking a putt, hitting a homer, or making that free throw are all prime examples. Here, focusing on your inner process of doing the task, which scientists call explicit monitoring, screws things up by interfering with the automatic nature of the task.
One study looked at both kinds of choking. Participants were asked to swing a baseball bat at virtual reality pitches. Half the participants were Division 1-A college baseball players who had been playing for most of their lives. The other half had played on a recreational league in the past year, but otherwise didn’t have much experience.
In the first experiment, the researchers distracted each batter by asking them to identify whether a short tone played while they swung at the ball was high or low. For the novice players, the distraction worsened their performance because it ate up their bandwidth and interfered with thinking about how to hit the ball. But the expert athletes performed just as well as usual because the distraction didn’t compete with their finely honed muscle memory.
But the next setup was different. In the second experiment, participants were asked to report whether their bat was moving upwards or downwards at the instant the tone was played, thus forcing them to attend to their movement. This time around, the novice players’ hitting was unchanged, but the experts’ hits suffered. Attending to their swing switched their movement from unconscious to conscious, which in turn screwed them up. In other words, swinging consciously made them swing like novices.
In sum, choking happens in one of two ways. In conscious tasks where you rely on your brain, worry takes up your bandwidth and makes you choke. In unconscious tasks where you rely on your muscles, thinking overrides the process and, once again, delivers you to Chokesville.
Remember the study I mentioned about lonely people choking under self-imposed social pressure? Socializing requires both kinds of memory. You need your working memory to hold a conversation—to listen and think of what to say next—but you also need procedural memory to do simple things like walk up stairs, navigate a crowded room, or pour a drink.
We’ve all felt lonely at times—moving to a new place, stuck at home with a new baby, starting over after getting sober or getting divorced. And it’s precisely when we’re most in need of social connections that we seem to screw them up—we do something weird, say something awkward, or remain silent because we feel self-conscious.
Luckily, no matter your pressured situation—the SAT, the free-throw line, or meeting your new co-workers at orientation, here are 4 tips to move you from choking to coming through in the clutch.
Tip #1: If you’re a novice, take your time. If you’re an expert, get it done.
Sports psychology researchers from the University of Chicago ran an innovative study where they asked golfers to putt using either a standard putter—something they had practiced a million times—or a distorted S-shaped putter—something they had never encountered before. Half of each group was told to take as much time as they needed while the other half was told to putt as quickly as possible while still being accurate.
What happened? With the unfamiliar S-shaped putter, taking as much time as they needed improved performance. But with the standard putter, the group that was told to go quickly performed better—they didn’t rush, but they didn’t have time to overthink things. Makes sense so far.
Now, here’s the thing: once the golfers had the chance to practice with the funny S-shaped putter and got the hang of it, they then started to perform better when told to go quickly.
The upshot? If you’re new to something and really do need to think your way through it, take all the time you need. By contrast, if you’re well-practiced, taking your time can lead to overthinking. Instead, trust your experience and get it done.
Tip #2: Focus outward on the goal, not inward on the mechanics or the worry.
Both types of choke can be remedied by focusing outward. Rather than focusing on your internal worry or your internal process, focus on what’s in front of you—the math test, the basketball net, or the person you’re talking to.
This is a technique from social anxiety treatment called task-focused attention. Essentially, it’s turning your attention away from your internal monologue (“Am I doing this right? Do I look weird? Act casual, act casual.”) and instead focusing on your goal.
Tip #3: Practice not just the action, but the anxiety.
We all get a little self-conscious when we know we’re being watched, whether we’re lining up the penalty kick or just trying to calculate the tip while our friends wait. But we also get self-conscious when we watch ourselves.
So get used to being observed. Practice your task—whether a putt or a job talk—in front of an audience. Practice your big presentation in the conference room but don’t pull the shades—let everyone walking by see in. Practice your free throw when your local court is the most crowded, not after everyone has gone home. If none of those are possible, videotape yourself. It will make you self-conscious, but that’s the point. Practice while feeling a little anxious, and you’ll come through much more effectively when you’re feeling a lot anxious.
Tip #4: Distract yourself…but only if you can rely on your muscle memory.
Brains really cannot multitask, so if your performance is physical, like making that putt or kicking that field goal, distracting yourself with, for example, random pop songs is ideal to achieve what researchers call optimal inattention.” Focus intently on the song, and likely you simply won’t be able to pay attention to your worries. This allows you to ignore your overthinking and let your muscle memory get on with what it knows how to do.
In short, if your task is in the muscles, distract. If it’s in the brain, refrain.
But if your task does take brainpower, like a math test, distraction isn’t a good go-to. In these cases, distraction will take up more of your bandwidth because now you’re worrying and humming Sia’s “Chandelier” and monitoring to see if it’s working and wondering how on earth she got away with rhyming the totally not-rhyming words of “chandelier” and “exist.” With all that in your brain, things probably won’t go so well.
In short, if your task is in the muscles, distract. If it’s in the brain, refrain.
Whether your next big moment is on the links, on the court, or simply at a party where you’re hoping not to end up wearing the cheese dip, focus on the goal and get it done. You can do it. And even if you choke, don’t despair. As John McEnroe, who famously choked in the 1984 French Open, once said, “We all choke, but winners know how to handle choking better than losers.”
Pre-order Ellen’s forthcoming book HOW TO BE YOURSELF: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety. Get even more savvy tips to be happier and healthier by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or get each episode delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for the newsletter. Follow on Facebook and Twitter.
For free, helpful downloads to fight social anxiety and be your authentic self, visit EllenHendriksen.com.
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About the Author
Dr. Ellen Hendriksen was the host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast from 2014 to 2019. She is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. Her scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and many other media outlets. Her debut book, HOW TO BE YOURSELF: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety, was published in March 2018.
