Abstract
Humans often experience striking performance deficits when their outcomes are determined by their own performance, colloquially referred to as “choking under pressure.” Physiological stress responses that have been linked to both choking and thriving are well-conserved in primates, but it is unknown whether other primates experience similar effects of pressure. Understanding whether this occurs and, if so, its physiological correlates, will help clarify the evolution and proximate causes of choking in humans. To address this, we trained capuchin monkeys on a computer game that had clearly denoted high- and low-pressure trials, then tested them on trials with the same signals of high pressure, but no difference in task difficulty. Monkeys significantly varied in whether they performed worse or better on high-pressure testing trials and performance improved as monkeys gained experience with performing under pressure. Baseline levels of cortisol were significantly negatively related to performance on high-pressure trials as compared to low-pressure trials. Taken together, this indicates that less experience with pressure may interact with long-term stress to produce choking behavior in early sessions of a task. Our results suggest that performance deficits (or improvements) under pressure are not solely due to human specific factors but are rooted in evolutionarily conserved biological factors.
Highlights
Humans often experience striking performance deficits when their outcomes are determined by their own performance, colloquially referred to as “choking under pressure.” Physiological stress responses that have been linked to both choking and thriving are well-conserved in primates, but it is unknown whether other primates experience similar effects of pressure
The over-arousal hypothesis is based in the Yerkes-Dodson law, which posits that for a given task there is a state of arousal that is optimal to perform that task, and beyond that optimal point, performance decreases with increasing arousal[11]
How do capuchin monkeys vary in their ability to perform under pressure? To assess if capuchin monkeys, like humans, vary in their individual susceptibility to choking under pressure, we conducted a computerized delayed-match-to- sample task (DMTS; see “Methods” section for details) in which some trials were designed to induce a higher level of pressure without an increase in task difficulty
Summary
Humans often experience striking performance deficits when their outcomes are determined by their own performance, colloquially referred to as “choking under pressure.” Physiological stress responses that have been linked to both choking and thriving are well-conserved in primates, but it is unknown whether other primates experience similar effects of pressure. In situations involving cognitive rather than physical performance, tasks that engage and rely on working memory seem to be sensitive to pressure demands, possibly because working memory requires sustained focus and attention that acute pressure might d isrupt[2,7] The explicit monitoring hypothesis suggests that attention is pulled away from the task at hand, but because the person becomes acutely aware of their performance and the actions needed to complete the task, heightening self-consciousness This change in attention impedes performance rather than improving it, which has been shown in a variety of cognitive domains[9,10]. Given that other species may not show evidence of some cognitive capabilities on which these theories hinge (i.e., self-awareness about performance, as in the explicit monitoring hypothesis), studying them is helpful for determining which accounts underlie choking behavior
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