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Choke: The Secret to Performing Under Pressure
In the tradition of Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works", popular psychologist Sian Beilock, an expert on performance and brain science, reveals the astonishing new science of why we choke under pressure. She explains what happens in the body and mind when everything clicks and the perfect golf swing, tricky mathematical problem, or high-pressure business pitch suddenly become easy. With surprising insights on every page, Beilock examines attention and working memory guide human performance; how experience and practice, innate factors, and brain development interact to create our abilities; how these interconnected elements react to stress - explaining counterintuitive realities, like why the cleverest students do worst on standardized tests; why we may learn foreign languages best when we're not paying attention; why early childhood athletic training can backfire; and how our emotions can make us both smarter and dumber. The mind and body are in even closer communication than was ever thought - and breaks new ground on top of 30 years of integrative health investigations.
376 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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March 15, 2011
A couple of years ago I read Predictably Irrational. That is a wonderful book – utterly fascinating while having the added bonus of also being very funny. One of the parts of that book that made my jaw drop was the story of Asian women who were given a maths test. Half of these women reminded of the fact they were women (and we all know women are hopeless at maths) and the other half being reminded that they were Asian (and we also all know Asians are great at maths) with the effect being that those reminded they were women did worse on the test than those reminded they were Asian. This effect is known as ‘stereotype threat’. Remind someone they belong to a group of people generally defined by a stereotype (it turns out this can be either positive or negative) and their performance is effected according to that stereotype – either a boost or a drop.
Okay, but why? So, I started on a bit of a search. It turns out (like all good stories) that the truth is a little more complicated than this female Asian maths test might have you believe – even if still fascinating.
Firstly, the effect isn’t nearly as predictable as this example makes it sound. The test needs to have a ‘certain difficulty’ for there to be any noticeable effect at all. This makes sense. Surely it couldn’t be enough to get African American kids to do worse in a test if they are answering questions like ‘2+2=?’ just by mentioning it is an ‘intelligence test’ – and it isn’t. But if the test has any challenging questions in it at all subtly referring to race (even asking them to tick a box indicating race at the top of the test) is enough to ensure a worse outcome for these kids.
The key word here is ‘subtle’. Highly explicit references to race are just as likely to increase their performance. A kind of ‘stuff you’ attitude kicks in. Interestingly, telling people about stereotype threat and how it seems to work before they take the result also has been shown to make it go away.
But that still doesn’t answer how the effect works in the first place. A while ago I read a book that suggested that the effect might be related to the effect golfers first started to talk about – choking. To choke is to fail under pressure – for golfers that pressure comes in the form of a championship. Someone doing remarkably well throughout the game can fall in a heap right at the end just due to the pressure of being so close to winning.
The point is that we choke under pressure in very particular ways. The book I read that discussed this mentioned that what tends to happen is that the things we are good at are things we do without conscious awareness. When they monitor the brains of people who are extremely good at badminton, for instance, and those who are good but not brilliant they find that the extremely good people tend to do less thinking (less of their brains fire) when they play than those who aren’t nearly as good. Proficiency is a mode of being, rather than thinking – in fact, thinking tends to get in the way. The next time you are driving and there are no people or cars around try to talk yourself through changing the gears. Umm, increase your insurance first though.
So, choking works like this. We are doing really well – we practice until we can do something without thinking about it. Then we are a couple of shots away from winning the President’s Cup and we miss a putt. We think – ‘god, I’ll mess this up if I’m not careful, I’d better think about my putting more’. And so we do. The problem is that we haven’t ‘thought’ about how we putt since we were 14 years old. This is a bit of a problem because as soon as we start ‘thinking’ about how we are going to putt we go back to playing like we played when we had no other option but to think about it – that is, like a 14 year old.
Switch contexts and now subtly remind someone that they are female and that this is a maths test. She might even want to do well, but stereotype threat is just that, a threat, and so she is likely to be more ‘careful’ in how she answers questions. Research has shown that this way of being careful means sticking to trusted methods of answering questions – that is, not being innovative or ‘thinking outside the cliché’ or whatever the phrase is.
And it just gets worse. The more women identify with the stereotype of being female in our all too gendered society the more likely they are to misremember how bad they are at maths, to think they are worse than they really are. Researchers have done a wonderful test of this – asking boys and girls a couple of months after a maths test how well they did in that test and then other questions to see how much they think of themselves as girls or blokes. Yep, you guessed it – if they thought of themselves as being girlie-girls then they remembered doing worse in the maths test than they actually had. The blokes remembered having done better than they actually did.
Choking goes some way to explaining this effect – but that isn’t why I’m writing this review. I started this because I read about this effect in a book and then wrote a review of that book but do not seem to have mentioned any of this stuff at all in the review. I say that because I can’t find the book this is in from checking any of the reviews of likely books.
When I came to write an essay on this topic recently for a university course I’m doing I wanted to refer to the research about choking. In writing this I think it might just have been Gladwell’s Blink – but I’ll need to check later to see if that is right or not. Memory is a curious thing – but the thing that helps it the most is being able to fit facts into stories – we are the stories we tell about ourselves. If I were to write a self-help book that would be what that book would be about. How we might as well change the stories we tell about ourselves to make ourselves look better than we really are – as in the end it seems to make very little difference either way.
I say choking goes ‘some way’ to explaining the effect, because there are odd things about it that don’t quite match – the stuff above about misremembering our test results according to our gender doesn’t really fit too well, for example. Let’s start though with the things that do match. Researchers have found that doubling positive stereotype references (telling boys they also belong to a good school and therefore ought to do better at maths than those dumb girls at the poor school down the road) can make them stumble and do worse in maths tests. Surely, this must confirm some kind of choking effect.
There is another interesting example where people are asked to look at a complex drawing and then try to reproduce it from memory. Women do better at this task if they are told it is a test of their drawing skills rather than if they are told it is a test of their spatial skills. Spatial skills sound too much like maths skills you see and this might activate choking.
But the really odd thing is a piece of research where girls are asked if they believed boys were better at maths then girls. They all say no – rejection of the stereotype. But when tested and exposed to stereotype threat they, in their turn, still did worse at a maths test than girls not so exposed to the threat. I think there is likely to be a network of effects going on here – and unconscious conformity to stereotype is likely to explain at least some of this effect. Even unconscious conformity to a stereotype we consciously reject.
I’ve only read a couple of chapters of this book – and wouldn’t normally have written a review of it. But this is where I turned to when I couldn’t find the book I had read that mentioned choking and its relationship with stereotype threat – and the chapter here on that is well worth reading. I suspect the rest of the book is just as good. If there was world enough and time I would come back to this book.
Okay, but why? So, I started on a bit of a search. It turns out (like all good stories) that the truth is a little more complicated than this female Asian maths test might have you believe – even if still fascinating.
Firstly, the effect isn’t nearly as predictable as this example makes it sound. The test needs to have a ‘certain difficulty’ for there to be any noticeable effect at all. This makes sense. Surely it couldn’t be enough to get African American kids to do worse in a test if they are answering questions like ‘2+2=?’ just by mentioning it is an ‘intelligence test’ – and it isn’t. But if the test has any challenging questions in it at all subtly referring to race (even asking them to tick a box indicating race at the top of the test) is enough to ensure a worse outcome for these kids.
The key word here is ‘subtle’. Highly explicit references to race are just as likely to increase their performance. A kind of ‘stuff you’ attitude kicks in. Interestingly, telling people about stereotype threat and how it seems to work before they take the result also has been shown to make it go away.
But that still doesn’t answer how the effect works in the first place. A while ago I read a book that suggested that the effect might be related to the effect golfers first started to talk about – choking. To choke is to fail under pressure – for golfers that pressure comes in the form of a championship. Someone doing remarkably well throughout the game can fall in a heap right at the end just due to the pressure of being so close to winning.
The point is that we choke under pressure in very particular ways. The book I read that discussed this mentioned that what tends to happen is that the things we are good at are things we do without conscious awareness. When they monitor the brains of people who are extremely good at badminton, for instance, and those who are good but not brilliant they find that the extremely good people tend to do less thinking (less of their brains fire) when they play than those who aren’t nearly as good. Proficiency is a mode of being, rather than thinking – in fact, thinking tends to get in the way. The next time you are driving and there are no people or cars around try to talk yourself through changing the gears. Umm, increase your insurance first though.
So, choking works like this. We are doing really well – we practice until we can do something without thinking about it. Then we are a couple of shots away from winning the President’s Cup and we miss a putt. We think – ‘god, I’ll mess this up if I’m not careful, I’d better think about my putting more’. And so we do. The problem is that we haven’t ‘thought’ about how we putt since we were 14 years old. This is a bit of a problem because as soon as we start ‘thinking’ about how we are going to putt we go back to playing like we played when we had no other option but to think about it – that is, like a 14 year old.
Switch contexts and now subtly remind someone that they are female and that this is a maths test. She might even want to do well, but stereotype threat is just that, a threat, and so she is likely to be more ‘careful’ in how she answers questions. Research has shown that this way of being careful means sticking to trusted methods of answering questions – that is, not being innovative or ‘thinking outside the cliché’ or whatever the phrase is.
And it just gets worse. The more women identify with the stereotype of being female in our all too gendered society the more likely they are to misremember how bad they are at maths, to think they are worse than they really are. Researchers have done a wonderful test of this – asking boys and girls a couple of months after a maths test how well they did in that test and then other questions to see how much they think of themselves as girls or blokes. Yep, you guessed it – if they thought of themselves as being girlie-girls then they remembered doing worse in the maths test than they actually had. The blokes remembered having done better than they actually did.
Choking goes some way to explaining this effect – but that isn’t why I’m writing this review. I started this because I read about this effect in a book and then wrote a review of that book but do not seem to have mentioned any of this stuff at all in the review. I say that because I can’t find the book this is in from checking any of the reviews of likely books.
When I came to write an essay on this topic recently for a university course I’m doing I wanted to refer to the research about choking. In writing this I think it might just have been Gladwell’s Blink – but I’ll need to check later to see if that is right or not. Memory is a curious thing – but the thing that helps it the most is being able to fit facts into stories – we are the stories we tell about ourselves. If I were to write a self-help book that would be what that book would be about. How we might as well change the stories we tell about ourselves to make ourselves look better than we really are – as in the end it seems to make very little difference either way.
I say choking goes ‘some way’ to explaining the effect, because there are odd things about it that don’t quite match – the stuff above about misremembering our test results according to our gender doesn’t really fit too well, for example. Let’s start though with the things that do match. Researchers have found that doubling positive stereotype references (telling boys they also belong to a good school and therefore ought to do better at maths than those dumb girls at the poor school down the road) can make them stumble and do worse in maths tests. Surely, this must confirm some kind of choking effect.
There is another interesting example where people are asked to look at a complex drawing and then try to reproduce it from memory. Women do better at this task if they are told it is a test of their drawing skills rather than if they are told it is a test of their spatial skills. Spatial skills sound too much like maths skills you see and this might activate choking.
But the really odd thing is a piece of research where girls are asked if they believed boys were better at maths then girls. They all say no – rejection of the stereotype. But when tested and exposed to stereotype threat they, in their turn, still did worse at a maths test than girls not so exposed to the threat. I think there is likely to be a network of effects going on here – and unconscious conformity to stereotype is likely to explain at least some of this effect. Even unconscious conformity to a stereotype we consciously reject.
I’ve only read a couple of chapters of this book – and wouldn’t normally have written a review of it. But this is where I turned to when I couldn’t find the book I had read that mentioned choking and its relationship with stereotype threat – and the chapter here on that is well worth reading. I suspect the rest of the book is just as good. If there was world enough and time I would come back to this book.
September 1, 2011
This has some extremely good points to make about worry, cognition, and stereotypes that make it worthwhile reading for anyone. For instance, worrying about not doing something makes it more likely that you'll unintentionally do it.
I only gave it two stars because I found it repetitive and full of sports stories, which I have minimal interest in.
Also, as a woman with very high math ability and experience in math and computer programming, I'm getting tired of books piling on Lawrence Summers' questioning whether at the very high levels of math and science, the greater prevalence of men might be due to the wider variation in intelligence and math ability of men. Beilock joined the chorus on this issue. First off, I think it's impossible to separate inherent ability from performance when you're dealing with very high level mathematics. Second, men only get one X chromosome, while women get two X chromosomes; the Y chromosome has only 2% of a person's DNA, so it makes more sense for men to have greater variability in X-chromosome genetic traits than women do (see this article for more details: http://precedings.nature.com/document...). Third, men are far more likely (4 to 1) to be affected by autism or Aspergers, so I find it unobjectionable to conclude that there are more men than women willing to dedicate greater portions of their lives to math puzzles and proofs (a very unsocial pursuit). At these higher levels of math performance, no matter how great the inborn math "ability" of a person might be, they will not do well if they are not driven--either externally or internally--to do so. There is an interesting 2009 MIT study (http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/4298) examining high school math contests and finding that the only girls who performed at the highest levels were those who went to elite schools, where there were likely organized teams and some social cachet from participating in the competitions. Boys don't seem to need as much pushing from outside sources to want to compete in math. I'd love to see how many of those girls went on to be at the top of a STEM field once they were out of their high school environment....
I only gave it two stars because I found it repetitive and full of sports stories, which I have minimal interest in.
Also, as a woman with very high math ability and experience in math and computer programming, I'm getting tired of books piling on Lawrence Summers' questioning whether at the very high levels of math and science, the greater prevalence of men might be due to the wider variation in intelligence and math ability of men. Beilock joined the chorus on this issue. First off, I think it's impossible to separate inherent ability from performance when you're dealing with very high level mathematics. Second, men only get one X chromosome, while women get two X chromosomes; the Y chromosome has only 2% of a person's DNA, so it makes more sense for men to have greater variability in X-chromosome genetic traits than women do (see this article for more details: http://precedings.nature.com/document...). Third, men are far more likely (4 to 1) to be affected by autism or Aspergers, so I find it unobjectionable to conclude that there are more men than women willing to dedicate greater portions of their lives to math puzzles and proofs (a very unsocial pursuit). At these higher levels of math performance, no matter how great the inborn math "ability" of a person might be, they will not do well if they are not driven--either externally or internally--to do so. There is an interesting 2009 MIT study (http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/4298) examining high school math contests and finding that the only girls who performed at the highest levels were those who went to elite schools, where there were likely organized teams and some social cachet from participating in the competitions. Boys don't seem to need as much pushing from outside sources to want to compete in math. I'd love to see how many of those girls went on to be at the top of a STEM field once they were out of their high school environment....
January 14, 2012
This is by far the best book on performance anxiety that I've read...and I've read a lot. According to the author, "choking" is the term used by golfers when they bomb an easy putt due to a high stakes game or when a kicker in football misses an easy goal because of self-consciousness and worry. Beilock uses examples mostly from the sports and academic world but I found they can easily be transferred to any performing arts situation. The claims and theories are backed up by considerable research. The choking "cure" ranges from a lot of obvious ideas like "practicing a lot makes a difference", to some new and not so obvious remedies such as writing out anxieties for a few minutes before performance.
I would have given the book five stars but it was extremely repetitive and I felt I had to read through a lot of irrelevant information before getting to the interesting stuff. There's an entire chapter on how experts are bad a predicting the skill level of amateurs that doesn't seem to have anything to do with performance anxiety.
Still if PA is a major issue for you, like it is for me, its well worth rummaging through the interesting as well as the uninteresting details. The "cures" she suggest work. I've tried some of them and while the don't completely erase PA they do keep the symptoms at bay.
I would have given the book five stars but it was extremely repetitive and I felt I had to read through a lot of irrelevant information before getting to the interesting stuff. There's an entire chapter on how experts are bad a predicting the skill level of amateurs that doesn't seem to have anything to do with performance anxiety.
Still if PA is a major issue for you, like it is for me, its well worth rummaging through the interesting as well as the uninteresting details. The "cures" she suggest work. I've tried some of them and while the don't completely erase PA they do keep the symptoms at bay.
March 29, 2014
I had already known with the large majority of the content of this book. New details were fewer than I had imagined. I speed-read these sort of non-fiction books, and don't think I miss any important details. Many non-fiction books could be reduced to 20% or so of their size.
January 16, 2011
This is one of those books that takes a concept and beats you over the head with it, and once it starts it just keeps on beating.
March 8, 2012
*A no-brainer*
Ever feel betrayed by your brain?
It's the day of the big test, and even though you've aced every practice test, you can't even get through the first few problems on the actual test. Or, you've mastered your speech, and could practically recite it in your sleep, and then on the day of your performance, you freeze. Or, you've been flawlessly making every putt on the greens during practice, but when the pressure's on during the game, you can't putt to save your life.
We're all too familiar with the ways the brain can choke. Fortunately, Sian's book _Choke_ provides us with insight into why our brains can get derailed, and also offers techniques for getting things back on track. In essence, there are two ways the brain can choke. The first happens when worries and anxieties interfere with the brain's horsepower needed for complex-thinking and reasoning tasks. The second happens when we over-focus too much on a performance, disrupting the natural flow of what normally happens outside of our conscious awareness. _Choke_ addressees both types of brain bonks, and shows what we can do about each.
The book is packed with plenty of food for thought to help nourish the brain and prevent choking. To whet your cognitive appetite, here's just a sample:
The curse of expertise:
*As we get better at performing a skill, our conscious memory for how we do it gets worse and worse. (p. 16)
Training success:
*Practice can actually change the physical wiring of the brain to support exceptional performance. (p. 43)
*Athletes' tendency to overthink their performance is one big predictor of whether they will choke in important games or matches. (p. 60)
Less can be more--Why flexing your prefrontal cortex is not always beneficial:
*Adults are better at acquiring a new language--that is, adults look more like kids with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes--when they are distracted and not concentrating too hard on what they are learning. (p. 77)
*Having a golfer count backwards by threes, or even having a golfer sing a song to himself, uses up working-memory that might otherwise fuel overthinking or a flubbed performance. (p. 78)
Brain differences between the sexes--A self-fulfilling prophecy?:
*Just being stereotyped negatively is enough to drive down performance. (p. 103)
*Stereotype threat is most dramatic for those girls who are the most skilled and most interested in excelling at what they are being tested on. (p. 103)
Bombing the test--Why we choke under pressure in the classroom:
*Practicing under the types of pressures you will face on the big testing day is one of the best ways to prevent choking. (p. 147)
The choking cure:
*Writing about your worries before a test or presentation prevents choking. (p. 159)
*Putting your feelings into words changes how the brain deals with stressful information. (p. 161)
Choking under pressure--From the green to the stage:
*Heightened attention to detail can actually mess you up. (p. 190)
*Paralysis by analysis occurs when you attend too much to activities that normally operate outside of conscious awareness. (p. 192)
Fixing the cracks in sport and other fields--Anti-choking techniques:
*Training in stressful situations minimizes the possibility of the choke as you gradually become accustomed to the pressure. (p. 213)
*Focusing on what to do (a strategy focus) rather than how to do it (a technique focus) can help prevent cracking under stress. (p. 222)
So, whether you want a test score that reflects your true abilities, you want to be able to speak eloquently (or at least flub-lessly) in front of an audience, you want to be able to make that putt when it really counts, or you just want to figure out how to get your brain on your side, getting your hands on a copy of _Choke_ should be a no-brainer.
Ever feel betrayed by your brain?
It's the day of the big test, and even though you've aced every practice test, you can't even get through the first few problems on the actual test. Or, you've mastered your speech, and could practically recite it in your sleep, and then on the day of your performance, you freeze. Or, you've been flawlessly making every putt on the greens during practice, but when the pressure's on during the game, you can't putt to save your life.
We're all too familiar with the ways the brain can choke. Fortunately, Sian's book _Choke_ provides us with insight into why our brains can get derailed, and also offers techniques for getting things back on track. In essence, there are two ways the brain can choke. The first happens when worries and anxieties interfere with the brain's horsepower needed for complex-thinking and reasoning tasks. The second happens when we over-focus too much on a performance, disrupting the natural flow of what normally happens outside of our conscious awareness. _Choke_ addressees both types of brain bonks, and shows what we can do about each.
The book is packed with plenty of food for thought to help nourish the brain and prevent choking. To whet your cognitive appetite, here's just a sample:
The curse of expertise:
*As we get better at performing a skill, our conscious memory for how we do it gets worse and worse. (p. 16)
Training success:
*Practice can actually change the physical wiring of the brain to support exceptional performance. (p. 43)
*Athletes' tendency to overthink their performance is one big predictor of whether they will choke in important games or matches. (p. 60)
Less can be more--Why flexing your prefrontal cortex is not always beneficial:
*Adults are better at acquiring a new language--that is, adults look more like kids with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes--when they are distracted and not concentrating too hard on what they are learning. (p. 77)
*Having a golfer count backwards by threes, or even having a golfer sing a song to himself, uses up working-memory that might otherwise fuel overthinking or a flubbed performance. (p. 78)
Brain differences between the sexes--A self-fulfilling prophecy?:
*Just being stereotyped negatively is enough to drive down performance. (p. 103)
*Stereotype threat is most dramatic for those girls who are the most skilled and most interested in excelling at what they are being tested on. (p. 103)
Bombing the test--Why we choke under pressure in the classroom:
*Practicing under the types of pressures you will face on the big testing day is one of the best ways to prevent choking. (p. 147)
The choking cure:
*Writing about your worries before a test or presentation prevents choking. (p. 159)
*Putting your feelings into words changes how the brain deals with stressful information. (p. 161)
Choking under pressure--From the green to the stage:
*Heightened attention to detail can actually mess you up. (p. 190)
*Paralysis by analysis occurs when you attend too much to activities that normally operate outside of conscious awareness. (p. 192)
Fixing the cracks in sport and other fields--Anti-choking techniques:
*Training in stressful situations minimizes the possibility of the choke as you gradually become accustomed to the pressure. (p. 213)
*Focusing on what to do (a strategy focus) rather than how to do it (a technique focus) can help prevent cracking under stress. (p. 222)
So, whether you want a test score that reflects your true abilities, you want to be able to speak eloquently (or at least flub-lessly) in front of an audience, you want to be able to make that putt when it really counts, or you just want to figure out how to get your brain on your side, getting your hands on a copy of _Choke_ should be a no-brainer.
May 23, 2017
After watching the Australian golfer, Adam Scott, choke horribly in the last four holes of the Open Championship and then playing horribly later that day myself (I was uncharacteristically nervous playing with new people), I decided to check out Dr. Beilock's book on "choking". It is a marvel. There is an astonishing amount of research on choking and Beilock is an able and informative author on the subject.
Her book is not focused on golf per se, but she does deal with golf in detail and I recommend the book specifically for golfers. For us, the main cause of the choke is that we are using the front of our brain when we should be using the more primitive parts. That is, we are thinking when we should be doing. But there is more to it than that, of course. Beilock has a number of useful suggestions, and here are several:
Practice with stress.
Distract yourself when performing an athletic maneuver that should be automatic, like a short putt or a swing. Distractions can include counting backward by threes, reciting 'adelweiss' during a swing or humming. This reduces the use of our working memory while we are performing and allows the primitive brain take control.
Focus on the goal, not the technique. If you need a swing thought, go for a holistic thought like "smooth", not a mechanical thought like keep the left arm straight.
Avoid negative self-talk. React to a disappointing performance by picturing improvement.
Dr. Beilock describes the research that supports these suggestions in a very engaging and accessible fashion. And her book is to the point.
Her book is not focused on golf per se, but she does deal with golf in detail and I recommend the book specifically for golfers. For us, the main cause of the choke is that we are using the front of our brain when we should be using the more primitive parts. That is, we are thinking when we should be doing. But there is more to it than that, of course. Beilock has a number of useful suggestions, and here are several:
Practice with stress.
Distract yourself when performing an athletic maneuver that should be automatic, like a short putt or a swing. Distractions can include counting backward by threes, reciting 'adelweiss' during a swing or humming. This reduces the use of our working memory while we are performing and allows the primitive brain take control.
Focus on the goal, not the technique. If you need a swing thought, go for a holistic thought like "smooth", not a mechanical thought like keep the left arm straight.
Avoid negative self-talk. React to a disappointing performance by picturing improvement.
Dr. Beilock describes the research that supports these suggestions in a very engaging and accessible fashion. And her book is to the point.
April 18, 2015
The research is useful, but the book felt padded and poorly connected. It would have been more effective as a pamphlet.
March 17, 2013
Choking is below normal performance under stress.
Chapter 1 - The Curse of Expertise
- short term knowledge is kept in the working memory in the pre-frontal cortex
- persons vary in the amount of working memory, and so their ability to carry out various tasks
- sometimes performance is inhibited when one rushes into a problem - the solution is to step back and plan the solution
- even practising under mild levels of stress can prevent you from choking when high levels of stress come around
Chapter 2 - Training Success
- well learned tasks, such as playing music, are guided by procedural memory, working outside of conscious awareness
- practice can actually change the physical wiring of the brain to support exceptional performance
- group pieces of information into bundles to help you remember them
- the hippocampus is important for navigation and complex routes - New York cab drivers have an enlarge hippocampus, larger in proportion to the number of years driving
- juggling increases the motion sensing areas of the brain - if jugglers quit, the increase is lost again
- playing music requires coordination of the two hands via the corpus callosum
- early musical (and other) training appears to involve the sensory and motor cortex, rather than the pre-frontal lobe
- skills imbedded in the motor cortex are less susceptible to disruption / choking
- overthinking performance can cause the working memory to disrupt the skills imbedded in the motor cortex
Chapter 3 - Less Can Be More
- having a golfer count backwards by threes or sing a song to himself uses up working memory that might otherwise fuel overthinking and a flubbed performance
- it appears that working memory can be improved with practice - a custom video game improves the performance of Israeli fighter pilots
Chapter 4 - Brain Differences Between the Sexes
- arguments that lower female test results are due to awareness of a female stereotype
Chapter 5 - Bombing the Test
- being aware of a stereotype can affect your performance
- if you can interpret your body's physical stress symptoms as positive, you are likely to thrive rather than choke
- practicing under the types of pressures you will face on the big testing day is one of the best ways to combat chocking
Chapter 6 - The Chocking Cure
- writing about your worries before a test or presentation prevents choking
- all tips are summarized on page 174
Chapter 7 - Chocking Under Pressure
- heightened attention to detail can actually mess you up
- don't think, just do it
- paralysis by analysis occurs when you attend too much to activities that normally operate outside conscious awareness
Chapter 8 - Fixing the Cracks in Sports and Other Fields
- training in stressful situations is important
- better to plan strategy, and let technique fall to the motor areas
Chapter 9 - Chocking in the Business World
- another summary on page 257
Chapter 1 - The Curse of Expertise
- short term knowledge is kept in the working memory in the pre-frontal cortex
- persons vary in the amount of working memory, and so their ability to carry out various tasks
- sometimes performance is inhibited when one rushes into a problem - the solution is to step back and plan the solution
- even practising under mild levels of stress can prevent you from choking when high levels of stress come around
Chapter 2 - Training Success
- well learned tasks, such as playing music, are guided by procedural memory, working outside of conscious awareness
- practice can actually change the physical wiring of the brain to support exceptional performance
- group pieces of information into bundles to help you remember them
- the hippocampus is important for navigation and complex routes - New York cab drivers have an enlarge hippocampus, larger in proportion to the number of years driving
- juggling increases the motion sensing areas of the brain - if jugglers quit, the increase is lost again
- playing music requires coordination of the two hands via the corpus callosum
- early musical (and other) training appears to involve the sensory and motor cortex, rather than the pre-frontal lobe
- skills imbedded in the motor cortex are less susceptible to disruption / choking
- overthinking performance can cause the working memory to disrupt the skills imbedded in the motor cortex
Chapter 3 - Less Can Be More
- having a golfer count backwards by threes or sing a song to himself uses up working memory that might otherwise fuel overthinking and a flubbed performance
- it appears that working memory can be improved with practice - a custom video game improves the performance of Israeli fighter pilots
Chapter 4 - Brain Differences Between the Sexes
- arguments that lower female test results are due to awareness of a female stereotype
Chapter 5 - Bombing the Test
- being aware of a stereotype can affect your performance
- if you can interpret your body's physical stress symptoms as positive, you are likely to thrive rather than choke
- practicing under the types of pressures you will face on the big testing day is one of the best ways to combat chocking
Chapter 6 - The Chocking Cure
- writing about your worries before a test or presentation prevents choking
- all tips are summarized on page 174
Chapter 7 - Chocking Under Pressure
- heightened attention to detail can actually mess you up
- don't think, just do it
- paralysis by analysis occurs when you attend too much to activities that normally operate outside conscious awareness
Chapter 8 - Fixing the Cracks in Sports and Other Fields
- training in stressful situations is important
- better to plan strategy, and let technique fall to the motor areas
Chapter 9 - Chocking in the Business World
- another summary on page 257
June 7, 2015
The information presented during the first chapters was simply regurgitated throughout the remainder of the book. Also, if you have zero interest in sports and only vaguely recognize names of sport figure heads (I'm in that category), then you are going to learn quickly that sports are apparently the number one issue to which 'everyone' can relate. There were a few good suggestions smattered through the pages in regards to how to deal with anxiety during a high stress situation. Overall, I found it to be of little interest and simply skimmed over on third of the book as I realized that the sports connections were continuing.
February 13, 2016
Interesting book about stress impact on human brain. A lot of scientific data, some practical recommendations on how to deal with stress and prevent failure.
February 23, 2023
Some of the biggest take aways for me from this book:
1. Practice under pressure - the type of pressure you will be facing when you need to accomplish the task “for real”.
2. Beta blockers could help students who underperform under pressure, but are brilliant when not under pressure. For students that don’t have nervous tendencies, it makes no difference.
3. Practice thinking about what you want to happen as opposed to what you don’t want to happen.
4. Also try focusing on something entirely related to keep your brain from over thinking- maybe your small toe, your breath, a song you like.
5. We work best when functioning off of natural responses. Practice well and carefully so that your prefrontal cortex offers the correct solution in case of a “black out” or a “flub” moment.
6. One can precondition poor outcomes from students through implicit bias. I.e, starting a math test with a personal questionnaire of Male or Female, this could trigger “girls are bad at math” bias. Implicit biases are harmful for performers, whether performing in a test, concert or a sports event and can cause choking. Common biases discussed in this book: racial, gender, ability, LGBTQIA+ community.
Very helpful book as a music educator and player. SO many anecdotes though, I could have easily understood the points being made with less hypotheticals.
1. Practice under pressure - the type of pressure you will be facing when you need to accomplish the task “for real”.
2. Beta blockers could help students who underperform under pressure, but are brilliant when not under pressure. For students that don’t have nervous tendencies, it makes no difference.
3. Practice thinking about what you want to happen as opposed to what you don’t want to happen.
4. Also try focusing on something entirely related to keep your brain from over thinking- maybe your small toe, your breath, a song you like.
5. We work best when functioning off of natural responses. Practice well and carefully so that your prefrontal cortex offers the correct solution in case of a “black out” or a “flub” moment.
6. One can precondition poor outcomes from students through implicit bias. I.e, starting a math test with a personal questionnaire of Male or Female, this could trigger “girls are bad at math” bias. Implicit biases are harmful for performers, whether performing in a test, concert or a sports event and can cause choking. Common biases discussed in this book: racial, gender, ability, LGBTQIA+ community.
Very helpful book as a music educator and player. SO many anecdotes though, I could have easily understood the points being made with less hypotheticals.
November 7, 2025
Ich hab da schon ein paar spannende Punkte mitgenommen, aber insgesamt hatte ich eher das Gefühl dass sich ständig wiederholt wird 🥱 die letzten Seiten hab ich ehrlicherweise auch mehr überflogen als gelesen
September 17, 2019
3.5 stars
July 11, 2025
Great information. keeping as a reference. A bit dry.
December 7, 2023
Choke by.Sian Beilock
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
-PRINT: © September 21, 2010; 978-1416596172; Free Press; First Edition; 304 pages; unabridged (Hardcover Info from Amazon.com)
-DIGITAL: © September 21, 2010; 9781572245372; Atria Books; Reprint edition; 306 pages; unabridged (Digital version info from Amazon.com)
- *AUDIO: © September 21, 2010; Audible Studios; 11 hours and 13 minutes; unabridged (Audio info from Audible.)
-FILM: No
SERIES: No.
CHARACTERS:
N/A
SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-SELECTED: Don purchased this years ago from Audible. Since it was in our “library” I thought I should listen to it to make it worth the purchase.
-ABOUT: How anxiety impedes brain function, and how to deal with it.
There’s a tremendous amount of discussion on test-taking, math and logic, the possibility of studies centering on who tests well in particular subjects being skewed. She also discusses how the assumptions of educators adversely affect the self-image of students, adding to test anxiety. There is also a tremendous amount of discussion around sports, and enough on public speaking to be useful.
-OVERALL IMPRESSION: Not being particularly interested in math or sports, the depth of those discussions bordered on annoying, but that’s just me.
AUTHOR: Sian Beilock. From Wikipedia:
“Sian Leah Beilock (/ˈsiən ˈbaɪlɒk/ SEE-ən BY-lok;[2] born January 10, 1976) is a cognitive scientist who is the current president of Dartmouth College.[3] Previous to serving at Dartmouth College, Beilock was the eighth president of Barnard College, the undergraduate women's college of Columbia University. As President of Barnard, she was also an academic dean within Columbia University. Beilock spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, departing Chicago as the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost.[4] She holds doctorates of philosophy in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University.[5][6]
Education
Beilock graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and a minor in Psychology. She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from Michigan State University in 2003.
Career
During and subsequent to her PhD research, Beilock explored differences between novice and expert athletic performances. Later in her career, Beilock's research focused on why people perform poorly in stressful academic situations, such as taking a high-stakes mathematics exam. Beilock found that worries during those situations rob individuals of the working memory or cognitive horsepower they would normally have to focus. Because people with more working memory rely on their brainpower more, they can be affected to a greater extent in stressful academic situations. Beilock's work demonstrated that stressful situations during tests might diminish meaningful differences between students that, under less-stressful situations, might exhibit greater differences in performance.[7]
From 2003 to 2005, Beilock was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Miami University. She was on the faculty at The University of Chicago from 2005 until 2017, where she was the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost.[5] On July 1, 2017, she became the 8th president of Barnard College.[8][9] On July 21, 2022, it was announced that Beilock will become the first woman ever to lead Dartmouth College in 2023.[10][11] She began as president of Dartmouth on June 12, 2023.[12] Beilock stated her focus is on improving student mental health. She has faced a tumultuous start due to several high profile incidents, including the arrests of two student protestors and free-speech concerns around monitoring of student communications. [13] [14]
Cognitive science and education
Beilock's research relates to educational practice and policy.[15] Her work demonstrates that students' attitudes and anxieties (as well as those of their teachers) are critical to student success.[16] In her work, she has developed simple psychological interventions to help people perform their best under stress.[17]”
NARRATOR: Suzanne Toren From AudioFile:
“In June 2019, Suzanne was inducted as a Golden Voice, AudioFile's lifetime achievement honor for audiobook narrators.
AudioFile Interview, 2005—Suzanne brings a distinguishing warmth and power to her narrations. Her talents extend to both fiction and nonfiction, and in her recording career of 30-plus years she has given listeners heart-wrenching memoirs, lively history, engaging light fiction, and involving mysteries. Her skill with European and Middle Eastern languages and a degree in French literature also help her provide an essential believability to the characters she portrays.
We've admired Suzanne's work on A MIGHTY HEART by Mariane Pearl, Queen Noor's LEAP OF FAITH, and Margaret MacMillan's PARIS 1919 . We were delighted with the smart narration and character portrayal in Julia Spencer Fleming's latest mystery, TO DARKNESS AND TO DEATH . And we look forward to her recording of Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest history, TEAM OF RIVALS, about Lincoln's political genius. In preparing for recording, Suzanne looks for clues in the text, seeing them as "stage directions" that allow her to intuitively follow the author's intent, to stay attuned to psychological subtleties, and to give emotional shadings to the characters. Says producer Claudia Howard: "She has the remarkable ability of living in every single sentence as it comes off the page. At that very moment in time, she sees and feels what the author is seeing and feeling. And when she sees it, we do, too." Suzanne raises text to a high level of intimacy and immediacy, providing a most compelling listening experience.--2005 Narrator Yearbook
Suzanne Toren's enticing storytelling style has served her well in a 30-year career of recording audiobooks. We have celebrated Suzanne for her variety of work--from the contemporary social comedy LE DIVORCE to the literary STORIES OF I.L. PERETZ to the kid-friendly Henry & Mudge series. Daily recording has not diminished what she calls her "sense of adventure" as she begins each new book, and she particularly enjoys the many roles she gets to play--the Mexican-American mineworkers of Barbara Kingsolver's HOLDING THE LINE ; the Lower East Side Jewish family in Sydney Taylor's ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY ; the orphan twins in RUBY HOLLER by Sharon Creech. She tells us that while allowing the story to emerge, she discovers something new and different in each project. She loves to "enter the universe of the author," and we, as listeners, are treated to her astute understanding of the text. Suzanne's ability to intuit an author's intent brings listeners to the heart of a character and the setting--as in her performance of Queen Noor's autobiography, LEAP OF FAITH , which thoughtfully creates an absorbing listen. In preparing, Suzanne says she follows advice she heard years ago: "Allow what you receive to land in your heart and then come out of your mouth." Honored by the American Foundation for the Blind's Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year in 1988, Suzanne is indeed a narrator whose intelligent voice is one all listeners should know.--2003 Narrator Yearbook”
GENRE: Non-fiction; Psychology; Science
LOCATIONS: N/A
TIME FRAME: Contemporary
SUBJECTS: Sports; Education; Mental Accuity; IQ; Stress; Anxiety; Presentations; Meditation; Self-talk
DEDICATION: “To my grandmothers, Phyllis Beilock and Sylvia Elber, each of whom modeled a spark and drive in her life’s pursuits.”
SAMPLE QUOTATION: Excerpt From the Introduction:
“Ever since I was young I have been intrigued by amazing performances—at the Olympics, in the orchestra pit, and even my friend Abby’s performance on the LSAT. How do people go about turning it on when it counts the most? Why do some thrive while others falter when the stakes are high and everyone is focused on their every move? As we know, sometimes that one instance of performance—one race, one test, one presentation—can change an entire life or a career trajectory forever.
My friend Abby and I have known each other since we were both thrown in the same dorm room freshman year at the University of California, San Diego. Although Abby and I shared a love for many things—the ocean, the Grateful Dead, and sappy movies—when it came to school, we couldn’t have been more different. Throughout college I was constantly in the library studying for midterms and finals, writing papers, and rereading my notes from class. Abby was not. Now don’t get me wrong, Abby did well in school, but you were more likely to find her at the beach than at the library and the likelihood that she would be daydreaming in class far outweighed the probability that she was actually listening to the professor lecturing in front of her. What amazed me most about Abby was her ability to perform well when the stakes were high. Abby wrote most of her English papers at four o’clock in the morning the night before they were due and reliably got A’s on them, and those all-nighters in the library before finals always seemed to pay off for her.”
RATING: 3.7 stars.
STARTED-FINISHED 11/10/2023-11/28/2023
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
-PRINT: © September 21, 2010; 978-1416596172; Free Press; First Edition; 304 pages; unabridged (Hardcover Info from Amazon.com)
-DIGITAL: © September 21, 2010; 9781572245372; Atria Books; Reprint edition; 306 pages; unabridged (Digital version info from Amazon.com)
- *AUDIO: © September 21, 2010; Audible Studios; 11 hours and 13 minutes; unabridged (Audio info from Audible.)
-FILM: No
SERIES: No.
CHARACTERS:
N/A
SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
-SELECTED: Don purchased this years ago from Audible. Since it was in our “library” I thought I should listen to it to make it worth the purchase.
-ABOUT: How anxiety impedes brain function, and how to deal with it.
There’s a tremendous amount of discussion on test-taking, math and logic, the possibility of studies centering on who tests well in particular subjects being skewed. She also discusses how the assumptions of educators adversely affect the self-image of students, adding to test anxiety. There is also a tremendous amount of discussion around sports, and enough on public speaking to be useful.
-OVERALL IMPRESSION: Not being particularly interested in math or sports, the depth of those discussions bordered on annoying, but that’s just me.
AUTHOR: Sian Beilock. From Wikipedia:
“Sian Leah Beilock (/ˈsiən ˈbaɪlɒk/ SEE-ən BY-lok;[2] born January 10, 1976) is a cognitive scientist who is the current president of Dartmouth College.[3] Previous to serving at Dartmouth College, Beilock was the eighth president of Barnard College, the undergraduate women's college of Columbia University. As President of Barnard, she was also an academic dean within Columbia University. Beilock spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, departing Chicago as the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost.[4] She holds doctorates of philosophy in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University.[5][6]
Education
Beilock graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and a minor in Psychology. She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from Michigan State University in 2003.
Career
During and subsequent to her PhD research, Beilock explored differences between novice and expert athletic performances. Later in her career, Beilock's research focused on why people perform poorly in stressful academic situations, such as taking a high-stakes mathematics exam. Beilock found that worries during those situations rob individuals of the working memory or cognitive horsepower they would normally have to focus. Because people with more working memory rely on their brainpower more, they can be affected to a greater extent in stressful academic situations. Beilock's work demonstrated that stressful situations during tests might diminish meaningful differences between students that, under less-stressful situations, might exhibit greater differences in performance.[7]
From 2003 to 2005, Beilock was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Miami University. She was on the faculty at The University of Chicago from 2005 until 2017, where she was the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost.[5] On July 1, 2017, she became the 8th president of Barnard College.[8][9] On July 21, 2022, it was announced that Beilock will become the first woman ever to lead Dartmouth College in 2023.[10][11] She began as president of Dartmouth on June 12, 2023.[12] Beilock stated her focus is on improving student mental health. She has faced a tumultuous start due to several high profile incidents, including the arrests of two student protestors and free-speech concerns around monitoring of student communications. [13] [14]
Cognitive science and education
Beilock's research relates to educational practice and policy.[15] Her work demonstrates that students' attitudes and anxieties (as well as those of their teachers) are critical to student success.[16] In her work, she has developed simple psychological interventions to help people perform their best under stress.[17]”
NARRATOR: Suzanne Toren From AudioFile:
“In June 2019, Suzanne was inducted as a Golden Voice, AudioFile's lifetime achievement honor for audiobook narrators.
AudioFile Interview, 2005—Suzanne brings a distinguishing warmth and power to her narrations. Her talents extend to both fiction and nonfiction, and in her recording career of 30-plus years she has given listeners heart-wrenching memoirs, lively history, engaging light fiction, and involving mysteries. Her skill with European and Middle Eastern languages and a degree in French literature also help her provide an essential believability to the characters she portrays.
We've admired Suzanne's work on A MIGHTY HEART by Mariane Pearl, Queen Noor's LEAP OF FAITH, and Margaret MacMillan's PARIS 1919 . We were delighted with the smart narration and character portrayal in Julia Spencer Fleming's latest mystery, TO DARKNESS AND TO DEATH . And we look forward to her recording of Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest history, TEAM OF RIVALS, about Lincoln's political genius. In preparing for recording, Suzanne looks for clues in the text, seeing them as "stage directions" that allow her to intuitively follow the author's intent, to stay attuned to psychological subtleties, and to give emotional shadings to the characters. Says producer Claudia Howard: "She has the remarkable ability of living in every single sentence as it comes off the page. At that very moment in time, she sees and feels what the author is seeing and feeling. And when she sees it, we do, too." Suzanne raises text to a high level of intimacy and immediacy, providing a most compelling listening experience.--2005 Narrator Yearbook
Suzanne Toren's enticing storytelling style has served her well in a 30-year career of recording audiobooks. We have celebrated Suzanne for her variety of work--from the contemporary social comedy LE DIVORCE to the literary STORIES OF I.L. PERETZ to the kid-friendly Henry & Mudge series. Daily recording has not diminished what she calls her "sense of adventure" as she begins each new book, and she particularly enjoys the many roles she gets to play--the Mexican-American mineworkers of Barbara Kingsolver's HOLDING THE LINE ; the Lower East Side Jewish family in Sydney Taylor's ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY ; the orphan twins in RUBY HOLLER by Sharon Creech. She tells us that while allowing the story to emerge, she discovers something new and different in each project. She loves to "enter the universe of the author," and we, as listeners, are treated to her astute understanding of the text. Suzanne's ability to intuit an author's intent brings listeners to the heart of a character and the setting--as in her performance of Queen Noor's autobiography, LEAP OF FAITH , which thoughtfully creates an absorbing listen. In preparing, Suzanne says she follows advice she heard years ago: "Allow what you receive to land in your heart and then come out of your mouth." Honored by the American Foundation for the Blind's Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year in 1988, Suzanne is indeed a narrator whose intelligent voice is one all listeners should know.--2003 Narrator Yearbook”
GENRE: Non-fiction; Psychology; Science
LOCATIONS: N/A
TIME FRAME: Contemporary
SUBJECTS: Sports; Education; Mental Accuity; IQ; Stress; Anxiety; Presentations; Meditation; Self-talk
DEDICATION: “To my grandmothers, Phyllis Beilock and Sylvia Elber, each of whom modeled a spark and drive in her life’s pursuits.”
SAMPLE QUOTATION: Excerpt From the Introduction:
“Ever since I was young I have been intrigued by amazing performances—at the Olympics, in the orchestra pit, and even my friend Abby’s performance on the LSAT. How do people go about turning it on when it counts the most? Why do some thrive while others falter when the stakes are high and everyone is focused on their every move? As we know, sometimes that one instance of performance—one race, one test, one presentation—can change an entire life or a career trajectory forever.
My friend Abby and I have known each other since we were both thrown in the same dorm room freshman year at the University of California, San Diego. Although Abby and I shared a love for many things—the ocean, the Grateful Dead, and sappy movies—when it came to school, we couldn’t have been more different. Throughout college I was constantly in the library studying for midterms and finals, writing papers, and rereading my notes from class. Abby was not. Now don’t get me wrong, Abby did well in school, but you were more likely to find her at the beach than at the library and the likelihood that she would be daydreaming in class far outweighed the probability that she was actually listening to the professor lecturing in front of her. What amazed me most about Abby was her ability to perform well when the stakes were high. Abby wrote most of her English papers at four o’clock in the morning the night before they were due and reliably got A’s on them, and those all-nighters in the library before finals always seemed to pay off for her.”
RATING: 3.7 stars.
STARTED-FINISHED 11/10/2023-11/28/2023
June 9, 2016
“Choke” in this book means to under-perform under high stakes. It doesn’t mean to be a poor performer, generally. This book is designed to help those who perform at a lower level when the pressure is on. It’s a condition that’s even been witnessed in Olympic caliber athletes--world champions who couldn’t get on the podium in the most important games of their careers. The book isn’t just about choking in sports; in fact, much of it is about bombing tests, and it also addresses under-performance in business environments.
“Choke” is organized into nine chapters. The first is called the “curse of expertise,” and it deals with just that—how experts are notoriously bad judges of how successful novices will be. This is because the causes of under-performance aren’t always straight forward. For example, some qualities that serve to make individuals strong contenders under low pressure conditions (e.g. a large working-memory) contribute to the cracking of the same individuals under high stakes. The second chapter explains how practice improves performance. Chapter three investigates why using our Prefrontal Cortex (i.e. our conscious mind) can do us in when the task calls for procedural memory that is unconscious to do its work.
Chapter four delves into the differences between the sexes in academic endeavors. Chapter five is about choking on tests in a scholastic environment, and it deals a lot with why minorities under-perform on standardized tests. Chapter Six presents some activities that have been shown to be successful in reducing choking including therapeutic writing, meditation, and changing one’s mode of thinking. There is a box at the end of the chapter that summarizes many of these cures.
Chapter seven discusses choking in sports. Choking in sports has some common ground with academic under-performance. However, it’s also different in that the object is often to quiet the conscious mind altogether. Some solutions for the yips in sports, such as mantras repeated in one’s mind to let the procedural memory take over, may not be as useful in an academic setting. Chapter 8 presents a range of techniques to prevent choking from practicing under more realistic conditions to getting on with it (i.e. not overthinking or slowing down) to distracting oneself to focusing on the goal (not the process.) The chapter also looks at the flip-side, why those who excel in physical performance often stink at coaching (i.e. they aren’t analytical about how it’s done.) This chapter also has a nice summary box of solutions. The final chapter looks at under-performance in a business setting, which again shares some things in common with choking in other domains, but also presents its own problems.
I found this book to be useful and thought-provoking. The advice is sound.
The discussion of bombing at tests and in the academic setting is largely applicable only to females or minorities as it focuses heavily on the issue of why these groups are disproportionately affected by academic under-performance. With respect to sports and business, the only condition necessary to benefit from the advice is a proclivity to choke or a desire to know how to help oneself or others avoid the fate. So depending upon what domain one is considering and one’s demographic, there may be other books that are either more or less relevant to one’s personal issue.
I’d recommend this book for those interested in the science of human performance.
“Choke” is organized into nine chapters. The first is called the “curse of expertise,” and it deals with just that—how experts are notoriously bad judges of how successful novices will be. This is because the causes of under-performance aren’t always straight forward. For example, some qualities that serve to make individuals strong contenders under low pressure conditions (e.g. a large working-memory) contribute to the cracking of the same individuals under high stakes. The second chapter explains how practice improves performance. Chapter three investigates why using our Prefrontal Cortex (i.e. our conscious mind) can do us in when the task calls for procedural memory that is unconscious to do its work.
Chapter four delves into the differences between the sexes in academic endeavors. Chapter five is about choking on tests in a scholastic environment, and it deals a lot with why minorities under-perform on standardized tests. Chapter Six presents some activities that have been shown to be successful in reducing choking including therapeutic writing, meditation, and changing one’s mode of thinking. There is a box at the end of the chapter that summarizes many of these cures.
Chapter seven discusses choking in sports. Choking in sports has some common ground with academic under-performance. However, it’s also different in that the object is often to quiet the conscious mind altogether. Some solutions for the yips in sports, such as mantras repeated in one’s mind to let the procedural memory take over, may not be as useful in an academic setting. Chapter 8 presents a range of techniques to prevent choking from practicing under more realistic conditions to getting on with it (i.e. not overthinking or slowing down) to distracting oneself to focusing on the goal (not the process.) The chapter also looks at the flip-side, why those who excel in physical performance often stink at coaching (i.e. they aren’t analytical about how it’s done.) This chapter also has a nice summary box of solutions. The final chapter looks at under-performance in a business setting, which again shares some things in common with choking in other domains, but also presents its own problems.
I found this book to be useful and thought-provoking. The advice is sound.
The discussion of bombing at tests and in the academic setting is largely applicable only to females or minorities as it focuses heavily on the issue of why these groups are disproportionately affected by academic under-performance. With respect to sports and business, the only condition necessary to benefit from the advice is a proclivity to choke or a desire to know how to help oneself or others avoid the fate. So depending upon what domain one is considering and one’s demographic, there may be other books that are either more or less relevant to one’s personal issue.
I’d recommend this book for those interested in the science of human performance.
October 6, 2016
Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To addresses the problem of underperformance in critical situations. Sian Beilock offers evidence that "choking" in academic settings (e.g., SAT tests), performance settings (e.g., sporting events or music recitals), and business settings (e.g., speaking to an auditorium full of people) are related, but different, phenomena -- and that, therefore, different coping strategies are appropriate in each case.
Beilock provides detailed analysis of the reasons for underperformance -- but is able to offer only limited information about how best to avoid choking, which is the practical information many readers would likely most appreciate. Presumably that is because academic research does not have clear answers. There are some interesting strategies, particularly in the section on testing.
Beilock seems particularly interested in issues involving race and gender issues; she devotes considerable space to making an argument that certain kinds of test situations seem to favor people of one race or gender over people of other races or genders. This data is fascinating -- particularly the discussion of "stereotype threat", e.g., the fact that reminding a woman of the fact that "everyone knows that women are not good at math" can cause a woman to underperform on a math test, even if that woman is highly skilled in math and is well aware of her abilities. However, some of this discussion seems somewhat of a distraction from the core focus of the book.
If you are looking for information about how to best avoid underperformance in pressure situations, this book is a useful guide. Many readers may wish to focus on those chapters that align best with the situations relevant to them; for example, a musician might lose little by skipping the chapters on business.
Beilock provides detailed analysis of the reasons for underperformance -- but is able to offer only limited information about how best to avoid choking, which is the practical information many readers would likely most appreciate. Presumably that is because academic research does not have clear answers. There are some interesting strategies, particularly in the section on testing.
Beilock seems particularly interested in issues involving race and gender issues; she devotes considerable space to making an argument that certain kinds of test situations seem to favor people of one race or gender over people of other races or genders. This data is fascinating -- particularly the discussion of "stereotype threat", e.g., the fact that reminding a woman of the fact that "everyone knows that women are not good at math" can cause a woman to underperform on a math test, even if that woman is highly skilled in math and is well aware of her abilities. However, some of this discussion seems somewhat of a distraction from the core focus of the book.
If you are looking for information about how to best avoid underperformance in pressure situations, this book is a useful guide. Many readers may wish to focus on those chapters that align best with the situations relevant to them; for example, a musician might lose little by skipping the chapters on business.
August 21, 2011
This is a new book by a University of Chicago neuroscientist who specializes in why people screw up in high-pressure situations (thus the title).
Beilock does a good job of covering the relevant science, but the book suffered from repetitiveness on her main points, giving it a strong feel of a long magazine article that had been turned into a book by padding.
Her main point: When the challenge we face is a cognitive one -- doing well on the SAT or performing well in a presentation to a group -- the anxiety we feel about failing interferes with the working memory capacity we need to think clearly and well. It's basically a zero sum game for the brain systems involved in working memory, which is what allows us to remember a sequence of tasks and remain focused on a goal. So if our working memory is being used for perseverating about what might go wrong, it can't be used for thinking clearly about a challenging task. Among her tips: If you simply write down your good attributes ahead of time, or write down a list of the skills that make you a multifaceted person, it gives you a continuing boost of self-confidence. Writing down your worries about flubbing ahead of time can also help to mitigate them.
On the other hand, when our challenge is a physical skill during a critical moment -- the kind of challenge athletes face during soccer penalty kicks or critical free throws or at-bats -- choking often involves paralysis by analysis. In this case, the anxieties a performer feels lead to attempts to control the worrying by thinking about the moves or skills he or she is going to perform, and that actually hurts effectiveness, because skills developed from repeated practicing operate best when the person doesn't think about them. One tip for this different kind of choking is to actually distract yourself from what you're about to do by thinking about some mundane thing or my humming a tune.
An interesting area of brain science. Thirty pages less would have done the trick.
March 15, 2013
A book with research in it that I wish I had had access to as a high school student. Test taking is not my forte and the essence of Choke is on how to overcome the mental obstructions that can hinder performance in pressure situations.
Based mostly upon the author's research in tandem with complementary research in sports and neuro-psychology, the biggest insight shared is how a major element of choking stems from a physiological drain on brain resources. Worrying about an act not only distracts on a psychological level, but also on the physical level, diverting the brain's working memory resources--working memory being what is relied upon while executing tasks.
Discussed are techniques such as writing down your anxieties prior to a major test, sporting event, interview, and the like that can free the mind from such worries and enable better performance as a direct consequence. In complementary fashion, writing down one's strengths and credentials can have a calming and bolstering effect on performance. The caveat is that these techniques help provided one has adequately practiced and has the skill level in place to achieve at a higher level.
Consequently, the book is a three and a half star read. From a reader's perspective, the book is unfortunately repetitious and with a writing style that is, for the most part, pedestrian. It may be that the book was targeted at a very broad audience, including athletes, but this would be a case of "stereotype threat": who's to say that athletes don't like to read? I would rather say that it is the case of the editors failing the writer--and of a young academic writer lacking experience.
Based mostly upon the author's research in tandem with complementary research in sports and neuro-psychology, the biggest insight shared is how a major element of choking stems from a physiological drain on brain resources. Worrying about an act not only distracts on a psychological level, but also on the physical level, diverting the brain's working memory resources--working memory being what is relied upon while executing tasks.
Discussed are techniques such as writing down your anxieties prior to a major test, sporting event, interview, and the like that can free the mind from such worries and enable better performance as a direct consequence. In complementary fashion, writing down one's strengths and credentials can have a calming and bolstering effect on performance. The caveat is that these techniques help provided one has adequately practiced and has the skill level in place to achieve at a higher level.
Consequently, the book is a three and a half star read. From a reader's perspective, the book is unfortunately repetitious and with a writing style that is, for the most part, pedestrian. It may be that the book was targeted at a very broad audience, including athletes, but this would be a case of "stereotype threat": who's to say that athletes don't like to read? I would rather say that it is the case of the editors failing the writer--and of a young academic writer lacking experience.
August 11, 2016
Do you want to ace the big test, make the game winning shot or close the biggest deal of your career? Or does the fear of failing when it matters most hold sway over your thoughts everywhere from the classroom, the playing field and the boardroom? Either way, Sian Beilock’s Choke will show you not only why we choke under pressure, but more importantly what we can do to steel ourselves and prepare to succeed when it’s crunch time.
Based on research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, sport science and human performance, Beilock presents the latest research to help readers prevent choking, which she describes as not only poor performance under pressure, but suboptimal performance. This is an important distinction that informs the rest of the book.
Just the tips on pages 174, 232 and 257 of the paperback edition on ensuring success under stress, combating performance flops and preventing choking respectively are worth the price of the book. But after discussing the role of practice (especially under stress), tactics to overcome stereotypes (the power of writing) and even meditation, Beilock has written a great book that can help anyone achieve the success they know they have earned, but have struggled to achieve because of choking when it counts.
Based on research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, sport science and human performance, Beilock presents the latest research to help readers prevent choking, which she describes as not only poor performance under pressure, but suboptimal performance. This is an important distinction that informs the rest of the book.
Just the tips on pages 174, 232 and 257 of the paperback edition on ensuring success under stress, combating performance flops and preventing choking respectively are worth the price of the book. But after discussing the role of practice (especially under stress), tactics to overcome stereotypes (the power of writing) and even meditation, Beilock has written a great book that can help anyone achieve the success they know they have earned, but have struggled to achieve because of choking when it counts.
June 21, 2012
This book has a lot of good content in regard to why we choke when the pressure is on and how to fight it. It's data is rooted in neurology and psycology and most of its content is supported. In my opinion most of the content in the book is very well put forward, but maybe a bit heavy on the sports side for us that do not have an interest in it.
I highly reccomend this book for anyone that wants to get a better understanding of how to avoid buckeling under when the pressure is on. This book is no quick fix (and nothing really is) but it can give you alot of hints and help put you on the track of improvement.
It is a slow read with alot of details, if thats your style you will definitly get stuck in as I did. If not? jump to the summary parts of the chapters and see what most peaks your interest and look into them.
I highly reccomend this book for anyone that wants to get a better understanding of how to avoid buckeling under when the pressure is on. This book is no quick fix (and nothing really is) but it can give you alot of hints and help put you on the track of improvement.
It is a slow read with alot of details, if thats your style you will definitly get stuck in as I did. If not? jump to the summary parts of the chapters and see what most peaks your interest and look into them.
July 7, 2018
The title seemed interesting that's why I picked it up but I was dissapointed with the way the facts were presented. It was more like a scientific paper which echoed some ideas from Malcolm Gladwell. The examples themselves concerning why stereotypes for 'girls not being made for leadership', 'blacks doing poorer than whites in academics, etc were not very relatable. The interesting part regarding why we choke during interviews or when doing business (which is the only thing that I was able to relate to in the whole book) came at the final 10% of the book because the author just kept blabbing about sports icons who failed in their careers/attempt to get a medal 90% of the time. If you're looking for books in the same field, I would rather read Dan Ariely's.
April 12, 2015
This is an insightful examination into why some highly trained people fail when the pressure is on and how to decrease the possibility of it happening. Sian Beilock is a psychologist who specializes in this area and offers a thorough study of this topic including the influences of brain development, the impact of negative stereotyping and mental training (math exams) vs physical training (sports). The suggestions on how one can minimize the possibility of choking are nicely summed up at the end of each section. This book is recommended for anyone who wants to counteract the effects of performance anxiety.
December 10, 2016
As a sport psychologist, whose research interests lie in choking under pressure I was excited to read this book, and was familiar with many of the studies presented. I have read many of Dr. Beilocks original work, and it was nice to have much of it all in one easy-to-read book. I can understand how some readers may dislike some of the content, especially if they are unfamiliar with a number of the concepts coming into it. That aside, I truly enjoyed the book and even learned some ideas that I hadn't known of before. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the phenomenon of choking under pressure, or psychology in general.
July 2, 2014
Moved a bit too slow for me. I would have preferred the condensed version. I found some of the theories interesting but description of studies tedious.
March 29, 2021
A good book on the psychology of competition. Many of the concepts of this book are well known, but the most interesting thing was the part on worries take up space in the working memory of the brain. Working memory is what we are doing to remember your training. It is what is meant by "You don't rise to the level to the occasion but rather sink to the level of your training". The more you worry the less space is the brain for working memory to take over.
There is also the topic of perceived success and failures. People tend to fulfill preceptions made about them. If society does not expect you to win somehow you fulfill that perception and do not succeed. Maybe it is because you are engulfed by these thoughts that you leave very little room for working memory to perform.
Prefrontal Cortex (i.e. our conscious mind) can do us in when the task calls for procedural memory that is unconscious to do its work. This is improved with practice.
Activities that can help:
therapeutic writing, meditation, and changing one’s mode of thinking.
I find that therapeutic writing is often very beneficial.
Practicing the pressure situation. so that it becomes common.
Great book with some useful advice. I was most impressed with the science behind the explanations and advice.
1-“Our ability to make sense of movie plots, to navigate novel situations, or even to form first impressions of the people we meet is greatly aided by what we psychologists call schemas. Packets of knowledge that provide expectations about the activities we do, schemas help us comprehend new situations with familiar details.”
2- “merely changing how a math problem is presented on a page can change how your brain goes about solving it,”
3-“Schemas help us interpret new activities or situations in a meaningful way, but this only occurs if we are given the schema before (not after) we encounter the novel information.
There is also the topic of perceived success and failures. People tend to fulfill preceptions made about them. If society does not expect you to win somehow you fulfill that perception and do not succeed. Maybe it is because you are engulfed by these thoughts that you leave very little room for working memory to perform.
Prefrontal Cortex (i.e. our conscious mind) can do us in when the task calls for procedural memory that is unconscious to do its work. This is improved with practice.
Activities that can help:
therapeutic writing, meditation, and changing one’s mode of thinking.
I find that therapeutic writing is often very beneficial.
Practicing the pressure situation. so that it becomes common.
Great book with some useful advice. I was most impressed with the science behind the explanations and advice.
1-“Our ability to make sense of movie plots, to navigate novel situations, or even to form first impressions of the people we meet is greatly aided by what we psychologists call schemas. Packets of knowledge that provide expectations about the activities we do, schemas help us comprehend new situations with familiar details.”
2- “merely changing how a math problem is presented on a page can change how your brain goes about solving it,”
3-“Schemas help us interpret new activities or situations in a meaningful way, but this only occurs if we are given the schema before (not after) we encounter the novel information.
November 13, 2024
I am so bothered. That. A book. Can. Become. So vulgarly defaced. Like… this book. IS purely assumption. Not one bit of scholary facts and professional analysis. All the scientific and psychological insight. Are all generalized assumptions. That. Are impersonating the idea as if these informations are factual. There is no actual scientific professional work that this book supports. And. This book is completely a fraud account of professional scientific literature.
What question I wish to have answered. That. This author. Truly capitalized on. Is the idea of those whom perform at a lower level than their actual capability. And. My question is, “What does the system. And. The Government. Standardize to account for these people who are so subjected to pressure. Especially, since these people are very important people. For. The advancement of the system and the industry. Basically. For the development and growth of the entire economy and government. What does the government and system. Standardize. To assure these people succeed. And. Overcome their adversity. Obstacle (unrealistic and unreasonable social pressure).”
I would like an answer. Less than 24 hours (Current Date : November 12, 2024. Especially. With how the economy and society had developed into. Because. People like so. The author. For capitalizing on their opportunities of professionalism. By. Indulging on their options and opportunities to lie. About. The creditation, qualifications, and most importantly. Intentions of about how they intend to contribute to society. To. Advance and build society into a more perfect and prosperous system.
When. These people. Literally! Think that way, “To Lie to attain Money, Power, and Superiority over all those whom are genuinely intending to actually help make the world a better place. And. Especially, those whom are vulnerable to such people whom are of statuses that control their everyday existence”.
What question I wish to have answered. That. This author. Truly capitalized on. Is the idea of those whom perform at a lower level than their actual capability. And. My question is, “What does the system. And. The Government. Standardize to account for these people who are so subjected to pressure. Especially, since these people are very important people. For. The advancement of the system and the industry. Basically. For the development and growth of the entire economy and government. What does the government and system. Standardize. To assure these people succeed. And. Overcome their adversity. Obstacle (unrealistic and unreasonable social pressure).”
I would like an answer. Less than 24 hours (Current Date : November 12, 2024. Especially. With how the economy and society had developed into. Because. People like so. The author. For capitalizing on their opportunities of professionalism. By. Indulging on their options and opportunities to lie. About. The creditation, qualifications, and most importantly. Intentions of about how they intend to contribute to society. To. Advance and build society into a more perfect and prosperous system.
When. These people. Literally! Think that way, “To Lie to attain Money, Power, and Superiority over all those whom are genuinely intending to actually help make the world a better place. And. Especially, those whom are vulnerable to such people whom are of statuses that control their everyday existence”.
November 17, 2021
The book and author were brought to my attention while listening to the Hidden Brain podcast in which the author explores the subject in an interview with the podcast’s host Shankar Vedantam. The Subject of choking as discussed was something I could relate to given past experiences that had marked my life after poor performances in interviews, talking in front of others, and the like. The talk alone was very helpful but I wanted to read the book to get a better idea of the psycho emotional underpinnings and science behind a behavior that had brought so much sadness and frustration to me personally. Convinced that understanding the aforementioned would provide me with the tools to deal with the mental demons that would plague me whenever I faced a choke-inducing circumstance, encouraged me to read more than half the book through in an entire setting while taking notes on my iPad. Beilock does not disappoint.
At times the book reads like a professor giving a talk before an audience of her peers. It’s also repetitive leaving me with the feeling the book could had been at least 33% shorter but then again the plus side is that repetition has a way of driving the message home. Not only was I informed, but I was equipped with a framework through which I could appreciate the subject of choking while equipping myself with tools and strategies to help me excel in high-stress situations at work and beyond.
At times the book reads like a professor giving a talk before an audience of her peers. It’s also repetitive leaving me with the feeling the book could had been at least 33% shorter but then again the plus side is that repetition has a way of driving the message home. Not only was I informed, but I was equipped with a framework through which I could appreciate the subject of choking while equipping myself with tools and strategies to help me excel in high-stress situations at work and beyond.
July 16, 2017
a book about how stress and pressure that affects our performances..often it is proven that when doubts, self doubt, outside pressure, etc can be factors that affect the ultimate result or outcome..especially in critical matches, exams, presentations, etc....Dr. Beilock provides extensive research targets to come out with her conclusions..including the imbalances of boys and girls performances based on sexist ridden society..Beilock provides several remedies to avoid being "choked"....such as eliminating pressure by meditation before critical moment, practices more under repeated mock pressured circumstances, step back and looking at the bigger picture...these are all part of the (from my point of view) notions of zen..the more you want it, the less chance you will get it..being the smartest may not letting you to reach where you want, take a deep breath and look around you...strictly from scientific scope, this is a book is confined to prove there are larger and bigger picture for those to learn in order to "succeed"...
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