Cracking Under Pressure

Commentators profess surprise when figure-skating champions
like Michelle Kwan fumble.

Psychologists, for their part, might point to
"choking"—failing to execute previously mastered tasks—to describe
the tumbles taken by many athletes.

Researchers at Michigan State University believe they have a handle
on choking: It is not caused by distraction, as some had surmised, but by
an inability to handle stress.

Thomas Carr, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, and doctoral student
Sian Beilock offered two groups of golfers money if they could improve
their putt. They upped the ante by convincing subjects that everything
hinged on performance alone (they were paired with a partner who had
ostensibly met the target score). One group was exposed to distractions
during practice, and this group did not choke under pressure.

But the golfers who rehearsed without distractions choked during
the evaluation.

The findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, demonstrate that "a skill performed 1,000 times perfectly can
fall apart if an individual is not accustomed to highly stressful
situations," according to Beilock. So for those coveting medals, Beilock recommends simulating stressful situations
during practice and repeating a key word or song as a distraction during
the performance itself.