Using Analogies to Perform Better Under Pressure.
Choking occurs when athletes perform significantly worse than usual during important moments of competition. Choking is something that all performers wish to avoid. Athletes that perform well in pressure situations are considered clutch, lauded, and paid big money, while those that do choke get a bad reputation. Vast amounts of research has been dedicated to determining what causes choking and how it can be prevented. One such study that tested how athletes can become more resistant to choking was conducted by Lam, Maxwell, and Masters (2009). Their research centers on attentional control theory, which assumes humans have limited attentional resources available to help us accomplish every task we take on in our life. From driving to work to playing sports, we use these resources to focus on and understand important information. Under normal circumstances, we have plenty of attentional resources available to efficiently process information that is important for a good performance, but when we are in situations that make us anxious, some of our processing resources are used to think worrisome thoughts or dwell on past or future failures.
To conceptualize attentional control theory, imagine that a quarterback has 100 mental processing units available. To successfully run a play he must hypothetically devote 80 mental processing units to reading the defense and making a successful throw. Now imagine that he becomes stressed out in the 4th quarter of a playoff game and uses 30 mental processing units for thinking worrisome thoughts. That only leaves 70 mental processing units to run the play, but he needs 80 to perform at a high level. Because he lacks the appropriate resources to complete the task, he may not see a defensive end closing in for a sack or account for a safety jumping a route. Thus, anxiety reduces our performance by using up precious mental resources, leaving less resources for performance related tasks.
