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Don’t Concentrate
Since the early 1980s researchers have been studying in earnest the question of why we choke. In 1984 Florida State
University psychologist Roy Baumeister officially defined “choking” as “performance decrements under pressure
circumstances.” Ongoing research in the past 25 years has established that factors such as audience pressure and high
performance expectations make us especially vulnerable to choking—just as perennial chokers might surmise.
But in recent years, scientists have started arriving at more counterintuitive insights about the circumstances that court
choking. Well-meaning experts often advise performers to take their time—slowing down delivery, the thinking goes, helps to quell nervousness—but it is actually better just to get on with things if you are well rehearsed, says psychologist Sian
L. Beilock of the University of Chicago.
In a 2008 study she divided novice and skilled golfers into two groups and instructed them to perform a series of golf
putts. The researchers encouraged members of the first group to take their time, whereas they exhorted members of the
second group to swing as quickly as they could. Novice golfers performed less accurately when speed was emphasized,
but skilled golfers showed exactly the opposite pattern: they performed best when told to execute quickly and faltered
when advised to take their time. (This result adds weight to the long-held notion, confirmed by previous studies, that some
experienced golfers develop “the yips”—muscle tremors or freezing up—when they assume a position for a prolonged
period before putting.)
Beilock speculates that this pattern occurs because taking extra time to perform when you have already practiced ad
infinitum can encourage too much conscious thought. “These golfers were really hurt when we asked them to pay too
much attention,” she says. “What happens under stress is that they do start worrying, and in response to that they start
monitoring their performance.”