'Choking under pressure' is real—and here's the science behind it

 

Not choking under pressure is a sign of "mental toughness," but how exactly does it come about? New research suggests that choking—or the inability to do so—is dependent on two factors: the individual's aversion to loss and whether the incentive is framed as a loss or as a gain.

 

Aversion to loss is the measure of how strongly someone prefers avoiding losses to acquiring gains. A person with a high loss aversion would prefer to avoid possible losses instead of taking a chance on a potential gain, while someone with low loss aversion is more willing to accept potential loss in order to acquire a gain.

 

The study was done by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the California Institute of Technology and published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

 

Playing video games for science

 

The experiments involved 26 participants, aged 20 to 30 years old, and were done over two consecutive days. The participants first learned a simple but difficult video game that required precise hand control. The results were then used to calibrate the game so that the participants found the game equally difficult.

 

In the second round, the participants played the game for incentives. Before each round, they were shown a message indicating the incentive for that round, which ranged from avoiding losing $100 to winning $100. Each person received $100 at the start to pay off any potential losses. After completing 300 rounds, the result of one round would be randomly chosen to be the participant's take-home prize, thus forcing the participants to do their best in each round. They played the game while inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine so that researchers could see how their brain responded to the gain or loss incentives. The researchers focused their attention to the ventral striatum, a part of the brain that processes reward but also affects movement.

 

And finally, the aversion to loss of each participant was measured by analyzing their responses to 140 coin-toss gambles with varying incentives. For example, participants could chose to get $1 outright or take the coin toss to win $4 or lose $2. How about taking $10 or a coin toss to win $100 or lose $75? The sum of their responses determined their degree of aversion to loss.

 

It's a state of mind

 

The results of the study showed that choking or succeeding was influenced by how the incentive was presented and the individual's level of loss aversion. 

 

"We found that the way we framed an incentive — as a potential gain or loss — had a profound effect on participants' behavior as they performed the skilled task," says Dr. Vikram Chib, the study's lead author. "But the effect was different for those with high versus low aversion to loss."

 

Those with high aversion to loss performed better when they needed to avoid large losses but choked when large gains were on the line. In comparison, those with low loss aversion did better when offered increasing gains but choked when they needed to avoid large losses. 

 

What was going on in their brain?

 

As it turns out, it's all in the ventral striatum. Activity in the participants' ventral striatum increased during the presentation of the incentive, whether the incentive was a gain or a loss. Activity also increased as the magnitude of the incentive increased. 

 

But things got more interesting once the participants moved on to actually playing the game. Researchers found out that the activity in the ventral striatum while playing the game depended on the loss aversion of the participant. 

The ventral striatum of more loss averse participants deactivated when presented with larger gains, while the ventral striatum of those who were less loss averse deactivated when presented with larger losses. The degree of deactivation was proportional to the potential gain or loss, and the participants with deactivated ventral striata did badly in the video game. 

 

But how does the ventral striatum affect movement? Changes in the activity in the ventral striatum affected the activity in the premotor cortex - a region of the brain that's involved in the planning and guidance of motor activity, and ultimately how well one performs a physical challenge.

 

Helping people avoid choking under pressure

 

As explained by Dr. Chib, this new knowledge can be used to help people working in high-pressure environments avoid choking, be they professional athletes with the game-winning possession, surgeons performing delicate procedures, or airline pilots landing aircraft in harsh weather conditions. "We can measure someone's loss aversion and then frame the task in a way that might help them avoid choking under pressure." — TJD, GMA News