Source of Choking under Pressure

The purpose of the study was to investigate how attentional focus affect hand motion steadiness under different pressure levels and to explore the accuracy of skin conductance level (SCL) in measuring one's pressure level. Undergraduate college students (40 males, 40 females) were recruited to perform a hand motion steadiness task for two blocks (i.e., baseline and test) of 10 trials. The order of the blocks was counterbalanced within four subgroups classified by two between-participant factors: pressure, attentional focus. The pressure level was manipulated by whether participants were notified about a time constraints (which were not actually applied) in their performance and the attentional focus factor whether participants were instructed to do a task-focused self-talk ("Go Steady") or suppressive self-talk ("Don't Shake"). Participants' SCL and ratings of pressure level were obtained for both blocks. Results revealed that the ironic process did lead participants rehearsing repressive self-talk ("Don't Shake") to choke regardless of the pressure level. Besides, SCL seems to be more of an indicator for one's activation-arousal level than pressure level. Finally, females have a more steady hand under various conditions than males. These findings had both applied and theoretical implications and contributed to the research of choking under pressure.