Highly accomplished people more prone to failure than others when under
stress
Talented people often choke under pressure because the distraction caused by
stress consumes their working memory, a psychologist at the University of
Chicago has found.
Highly accomplished people tend to heavily rely on their abundant supply of
working memory and are therefore disadvantaged when challenged to solve
difficult problems, such as mathematical ones, under pressure, according to
research by Sian Beilock, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of
Chicago. Her findings were presented Saturday, Feb. 17 at the annual meeting of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
People with less adequate supplies of working memory learn other ways of
problem solving to compensate for their deficiencies and although these
alternative problem solving strategies are not highly accurate, they are not
impacted additionally by working under pressure, the research found.
Beilock found that when put under pressure, the talented people with larger
amounts of working memory began using short-cuts to solve problems, such as
guessing and estimation, strategies similar to those used by individuals with
less adequate working memories. As a result of taking those shortcuts, the
accuracy of the talented people was undermined.
"These findings suggest that performance pressure harms higher working
memory individuals by consuming the cognitive resources that they rely on for
their superior performance – and as a result, higher working memory
individuals respond by switching to the less accurate problem solving strategies
normally used by lower working memory students," Beilock said.
The results have implications for the evaluation of performance on high
stakes tests, such as those needed to advance in school and college entrance
examinations, she said.
Working memory is a short-term memory system that maintains a limited amount
of information in an active state. It functions by providing information of
immediate relevance while preventing distractions and irrelevant thoughts from
interfering with the task at hand.
People with a high level of working memory depend on it heavily during
problem solving. "If you've got it, flaunt it" Beilock said.
However, that same advantage makes them particularly susceptible to the
dangers of stress.
"In essence, feelings of pressure introduce an intrusion that eats up
available working memory for talented people," Beilock said.
In order to study the impact of stress on working memory, Beilock and her
colleagues tested roughly 100 college undergraduates. They gave them tests to
determine the strength of their working memory and then subjected them to a
series of complicated, unfamiliar mathematics problems.
Students were given pressure by being told they would be paid for their
correct answers, but that they would only receive the money if a partner, chosen
randomly who they did not know, would also win. Then they were told that their
partner had solved the problem correctly, thus increasing the pressure.
The study showed that as a result of the pressure, the performance of
students with strong working memory declined to the same level as those with
more limited working memory. Those with more limited working memory performed as
well under added pressure as they did without the stress. - U. Chicago
More information:
 William Harms
w-harms@uchicago.edu
773-569-0503
University of Chicago
|
