Choking Under Pressure Essay

1. Literature Review
With regards to choking under pressure, literature on the subject area is detailed and rich, with research covering a multitude of areas and disciplines within the context of ‘choking under pressure’.
1.1 Definitions of Choking
Within a sporting context there are a number of slightly different definitions of choking under pressure, however the most commonly used states that ‘Choking is inferior performance under pressure, while striving for optimal success’ (Mesagno & Hill, 2013:4). Whilst this definition holds the basic foundation for defining choking under pressure, it fails to take into account the idea that underperformance isn’t always a by-product of choking, there a number of external and internal factors that

There are a multitude of negative and performance debilitating effects of choking under pressure, for example choking may cause errors in reaction time tests, with subjects under pressure reacting faster, but far less accurately (Baumeister & Showers, 1986). Furthermore, it has been highlighted that choking can lead to an increase in state anxiety and a decrease in self efficacy as well as changes in attention and perception (Murayama & Sekiya, 2015). Additionally to this, Murayama and Sekiya point out the physiological impacts of choking under pressure which include increase in heart rate and systolic blood pressure. Moreover, behavioural changes as a result of choking under pressure include ‘decrease in movement displacement’, ‘increase in the length of time for movement execution’ and a ‘decrease in variability of movement displacement’ (Murayama & Sekiya, 2016:2). Ultimately the effect of choking under pressure, by its definition, is an overall decrease in performance (Schucker, Hagemann & Strauss,

Their findings revealed that a change in attention, referred to as ‘conscious processing’ occurs during a choke. They found that introversion and self-consciousness contribute to and promote conscious processing, thus inducing the choke. Opposing this, Iwatsuki et al (2016) suggest that athletes who pay more attention to the mechanical aspect of motor performance are far more likely to choke under pressure, when compared to athletes who pay slightly less attention to such factors. Even though both of these theories are slightly different in their views on factors related to athletes who choke, they both point to the idea that focus on internal and personal factors are primary contributors to choking. Contrastingly, Iwatsuki et al (2016) points out that even though focusing on technical aspects of motor skills can induce a choke in performance, when training it is seen as an essential part of skill development and technical growth. Their work therefore raises a paradox; what is the right amount of attention to pay to the technical motor skills when performing. Their study, off the back of this paradox, involved examining tennis players filling out questionnaires in regards to awareness of movement, planning, monitoring effort and so on. They discovered that ‘paying attention to movements and consciously controlling them’ (Iwatsuki, 2016:11) correlated in a