Early January 2002 President George W. Bush while watching a football game on television in his living quarters in the White House choked on pretzel and tumbled momentarily. But he never choked for a moment when he ordered the invasion of Iraq a year later. Nor did President Harry Truman choke when he ordered the dropping of atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pooh-poohing J. Robert Oppenheimer as a “crybaby scientist.” In Chris Nolan’s movie, Truman gives Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) his handkerchief to wipe it off when Oppenheimer says that he has blood on his hands.
But in our daily lives we see some of the most talented people, experts in their fields, in academics, sports, entertainment, business, choke under pressure when the moment for performance comes for which they have prepared for days and days. Why do the brightest students sometime do poorly on standardized tests? Why do we flunk that interview or miss that golf putt when we should have had it in the bag? Why do we mess up when it matters the most, when the stakes are high? This is how Dr. Sian Beilock, a famed cognitive scientist and a polymath, Dartmouth College’s president begins her book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To. Based on multidisciplinary research, lab work, anecdotal evidence drawn from media and personal narratives, the book is intimate, intellectually engaging and insightful, and most importantly it is a kind of how to do manual.
Explaining how the human mind works, Dr. Beilock says that higher-order brain power, located in the prefrontal cortex, performs functions like decision making, problem solving, and regulating thoughts and behavior. It plays a critical role in the working memory, which temporarily holds and uses information for tasks like reasoning, comprehending, and learning. Under high performance pressure and anxiety, the higher-order brain in the prefrontal cortex becomes overactive and strangles the learnt automatic processes and skills, and creates paralysis by too much thinking or over analysis. Does this explain the “To be or not be” Hamlet’s state of mind? Briefly, Dr. Beilock says:
Choking is a phenomenon that afflicts professionals of all stripes and walks of life.
Excessive brain activity hurts performance because it leads us to over-think what we’re doing. Body and mind work best when we don’t tinker with them.
Worrying not only takes up valuable working memory, but it may also deplete our self-control resources, making it even harder to perform well under pressure.
Trying to keep too many rules in mind leads us to lapse back into our prodigious memory abilities rather than the ordinary explicit memory we try to draw on under stress.
Feeling that you have little control over achieving a desired result leads to poorer performance and can eventually undermine your motivation to keep trying.
What we think about an upcoming event can play a big role in how anxiety affects us in pressure situations.
Consider the Nike’s slogan, “Just Do It.” Let the autopilot work.
Moreover, Dr. Beilock discusses about the stereotype threat, when simply being aware of a negative stereotype about one’s group or gender can negatively impact performance even for highly intelligent and skilled individuals. A stereotype activates anxiety and self-doubt, diverting attention away from the task at hand and towards proving the stereotype wrong. For example, the stereotype that girls are not capable of math-intensive tasks could make the girls more susceptible to choking when reminded of the stereotypes associated with them. Stereotypes can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, where individuals unconsciously conform to the expectations associated with the stereotype, even if they don’t believe it themselves.
Dr. Beilock makes frequent references to Professor Lawrence Summers of Harvard University who in 2005 as the university president said that women’s inadequate representation in science and mathematics was due to their innate differences in ability in these disciplines. Though he was fired as Harvard University president for making such disparaging stereotypical remarks, Larry Summers continues as professor at Harvard. Such stereotypes mouthed by powerful individuals can have devastating choking effect upon aspiring young women.
To combat choking, Dr Beilock offers several strategies, for example: Staying focused on the task at hand rather than turning attention inward is critical for performing well under stress; developing routines for dealing with anxiety and learning how best to execute skills in pressure-filled situations can be very effective in alleviating choking; and mentally rehearsing successful performances in high-pressure situations can build confidence and improve focus.
For long term mind-body balance Dr. Beilock recommends a Hindu form of meditation called Upasana. To re-orient yourself and regain control while under extreme stress, she says, try a mantra, a single word or short phrase that triggers a focused and confident state when you intone it during competition or performance—again a suggestion from the Hindu tradition.
After reading Choke, an enlightening book that instructs how not to break down under extreme pressures at critical moments, I began to wonder whether there could be some positive effects of the natural phenomenon from which no human being is immune. Just consider: What if President George W. Bush had visualized the invasion of Iraq and choked under the psychological pressure and held back. A most unnecessary and tragic war could have been avoided. Or, if President Harry Truman had visualized the horrific human suffering and choked for a moment and instead ordered the dropping of atom bombs away from human habitation, which as well could have ended the war. How is it that people like Donald Trump never choke under pressure? Perhaps in her next book Dr. Beilock would tell us how the minds of politicians work, why they don’t choke under pressure as most of us, the best of us, do sometime.
Dr. Narain Batra is the author of India In A New Key: Nehru to Modi. He is associated with the Graduate College at Norwich University, US.