Choking under pressure is defined as performance decrements under circumstances that increase the importance of good or improved performance. A model for choking on coordination and skill tasks is proposed, holding that the pressure increases the conscious attention to the performer's own process of performance and that this increased conscious attention disrupts the automatic or overlearned nature of the execution. Six experiments provided data consistent with this model. Three studies showed that increased attention to one's own process of performance resulted in performance decrements. Three other studies showed similar decrements produced by situational manipulations of pressure (i.e., implicit competition, a cash incentive, and audience-induced pressure). Individuals low in dispositional self-consciousness were shown to be more susceptible to choking under pressure than those high in it.
Abstract Intended to provide an overview of psychological research on life’s meaning for a philosophical readership, this chapter reviews multiple lines of enquiry. People find meaning in diverse places, so the questions (needs for meaning) may be more constant than the answers. Self-rated meaningfulness often emphasizes family, love, work, and religion, some of which seem little more than basic animal drives embellished with meaningfulness. Self-rated meaningfulness rises and falls in response to mundane events, increasing after seeing simple orderly patterns and while performing routines, and decreasing after interpersonal rejection. Searching for meaning is largely uncorrelated with finding or having it. Applying meaning to life may increase its incompleteness. Self-rated happiness correlates with meaningfulness, but important differences exist, including differential relevance of goal satisfaction, time span, interpersonal relations, stressful involvements, and self-expression.
An experiment investigated reactions to expectancies as a function of the reasons from which the expectancies were derived. Each subject was told that he was expected to feel inhibited performing a singing task. The expectancy was presented as based either on the subject's description of his personality, on the past performance of others with interests similar to those of the subject, or on the past performance of others with the same birth order position as the subject. Subjects then sang a piece without accompaniment for a tape recorder, ostensibly providing data about the effects of inhibition on the physical properties of the human voice. Subjects expected to be paid proportionally to the duration of their singing. The expectancies based on self-descriptions and on others with similar interests elicited faster singing, implying a willingness to sacrifice financial rewards in order to end an embarrassing situation, than the singing of no expectancy control group subjects, suggesting that these subjects actually did feel more inhibited than the control subjects. The expectancy based on birth order did not produce singing durations that differed significantly from the control group. The findings are interpreted as implying that persons will come to feel the way they are expected to feel only if the expectancy is perceived as deriving from some characteristic reflecting free choice and control.
