Choking under pressure - Lab Report Example

Discussion: The present research was aimed at exploring the effects of low, intermediate and high pressure on the performance of a typing task. It was hypothesized that the typing performance of participants will decrease with an increase in pressure experienced by them. Upon analyzing the performance of participants under the three conditions, it was found that performance decreases with an increase in pressure. The hypothesis is thus accepted. Results reveal that the number of errors occurring during a typing task increase significantly with an increase in pressure.

However, the results relating to the amount of words typed under pressure are slightly paradoxical. Contrary to the expectation that the amount of words typed would decrease with an increase in pressure, it was found that the number of words typed under low pressure was slightly higher than that under no pressure. However, it was also higher than that under high pressure, which is as expected. The findings of this study are consistent with those of other studies, which indicate that performance of tasks requiring working memory is hampered under pressure, as summarized by the Distraction hypothesis (Wine, 1971 as cited in Worthy, Markman, & Maddox, 2009).

This study also supports the results obtained by Markman et al. (2006) which investigated the effects of high and low pressure on performance. This study further attempted to investigate the effects of intermediate pressure, which was yet unexplored by previous studies. It is evident from present findings that pressure affects working memory of individuals during typing, thereby reducing accuracy and speed. However, the fact that typing speed, unlike typing accuracy, was higher in the low-pressure condition than the no-pressure condition shows that slight pressure raises the motivation to perform better at a task and yet, hampers the accuracy with which it is handled.

A significant strength of this study is its large sample size of 102 subjects. Furthermore, this study tested pressure at two levels – high and low. The study suffers from a limitation that it could not explore the effect of other possible pressure variables such as competition, ego relevance and performance related rewards and punishments (Baumeister and Showers, 1986). The participants were aware of the research being conducted and this may have affected their ability to perform. Lack of a standard measure of pressure makes it difficult to estimate exactly how much pressure was being experienced by each participant while performing the task.

Since each individual experiences varying amounts of pressure under different conditions, it is difficult to ascertain what qualifies as low pressure and what qualifies as high pressure for different individuals. Future studies should focus on a more diverse set of tasks and pressure conditions on the same set of participants. The present study successfully shows that the speed and accuracy of performing a task decreases dramatically in presence of high pressure, however, performance is slightly better under conditions of low pressure.

Future studies should seek to explore the effects of high and low pressure on the performance of both cognitive and procedural tasks. ReferencesWorthy, D. A., Maddox, W. T. & Markman, A. B. (2006). Chocking and Excelling under pressure. Psychological science, 17(11), 944-948.Worthy, D. A., Markman, A. B. & Maddox, W. T.  (2009).Chocking and excelling at the freethrow line. The International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving, 19, 53-58.Baumeister, R. F. and Showers, C. J. (1986).

A review of paradoxical performance effects: Choking under pressure in sports and mental tests. European Journal of Social Psychology, 16(4), 361–383.