Why Do We Crumble Under Pressure? Science Has the Answer (nature.com) 28
Have you ever been in a high-stakes situation in which you needed to perform but completely bombed? You're not alone. Experiments in monkeys reveal that 'choking' under pressure is linked to a drop in activity in the neurons that prepare for movement. Nature: "You see it across the board, you see it in sports, in all kinds of different sports and outside of sports as well." says Steven Chase, a neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chase and his colleagues investigated what happens in the brain that causes performance to plummet, and published their findings in Neuron on 12 September.
Choking under pressure is not unique to humans. In the same way that a tennis player might miss a match-winning shot, monkeys can also underperform in high-reward situations. The team set up a computer task in which rhesus monkeys received a reward after quickly and accurately moving a cursor over a target. Each trial gave the monkeys cues as to whether the reward would be small, medium-sized, large or 'jackpot'. Jackpot rewards were rare and unusually big, creating a high-stakes, high-reward situation. Using a tiny, electrode-covered chip implanted into the monkeys' brains, the team watched how neuronal activity changed between reward scenarios. The chip was situated on the motor cortex, an area of the frontal lobe that controls movement.
The researchers found that, in jackpot scenarios, the activity of neurons associated with motor preparation decreased. Motor preparation is the brain's way of making calculations about how to complete a movement -- similar to lining up an arrow on a target before unleashing it. The drop in motor preparation meant that the monkey's brains were underprepared, and so they underperformed. The results "help us understand how reward-outcome-mediated behaviour is not linear," says Bita Moghaddam, a behavioural neuroscientist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. To a certain extent, "you just don't perform better as the reward increases," Moghaddam says. It would also be interesting to see how other brain regions respond in jackpot-reward situations, she adds, because multiple regions could be involved.
Choking under pressure is not unique to humans. In the same way that a tennis player might miss a match-winning shot, monkeys can also underperform in high-reward situations. The team set up a computer task in which rhesus monkeys received a reward after quickly and accurately moving a cursor over a target. Each trial gave the monkeys cues as to whether the reward would be small, medium-sized, large or 'jackpot'. Jackpot rewards were rare and unusually big, creating a high-stakes, high-reward situation. Using a tiny, electrode-covered chip implanted into the monkeys' brains, the team watched how neuronal activity changed between reward scenarios. The chip was situated on the motor cortex, an area of the frontal lobe that controls movement.
The researchers found that, in jackpot scenarios, the activity of neurons associated with motor preparation decreased. Motor preparation is the brain's way of making calculations about how to complete a movement -- similar to lining up an arrow on a target before unleashing it. The drop in motor preparation meant that the monkey's brains were underprepared, and so they underperformed. The results "help us understand how reward-outcome-mediated behaviour is not linear," says Bita Moghaddam, a behavioural neuroscientist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. To a certain extent, "you just don't perform better as the reward increases," Moghaddam says. It would also be interesting to see how other brain regions respond in jackpot-reward situations, she adds, because multiple regions could be involved.
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I crumble every day 24/7 (Score:1)
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Maybe if I didn't crumble I'd have a job that paid me enough to afford therapy
This is now my excuse (Score:5, Funny)
I swear honey, this has never happened before.
However 'science' says "you just don't perform better as the reward increases" so this had to be expected.
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The same as when chickens get choked, which is arguably under greater pressure.
Or, negative pressure, like when worms get sucked.
I read about this from an author in the Department of Fishing and Tackle. With his advanced degree in the subject, he was a Master Baiter.
So where does activity increase? (Score:3)
A question to ask about this would be: in what regions does the activity increase in the same situation? Is it a case of the situation simply affecting the movement-preparation centers, or is the brain allocating processing somewhere else?
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Adrenaline, while not a brain region, is probably in play. High reward/risk response.
Fight/flight response should be similar to these results (just another example of high risk/reward).
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According to the abstract, the inhibition in the motor cortex is mediated by "reward drive neural activity". This is likely to arise in the prefrontal cortex, which is involved with selecting/inhibiting movement and is connected to the motor cortex both directly and through the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia can themselves inhibit movement (e.g. during sleep), but since this is in response to an evaluation of a future reward it's likely that the ultimate origin of the inhibitory signal is overstimulatio
I don't (Score:2)
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I'm wondering how long you've been working in Human Resources, in which industry, and what percentage of interviews you conduct where a prospect "brings a parent"?
Or perhaps it's just something you read on Xitter or Facebook?
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Promotions will now be granted with the same 6-month new hire probationary period, you have to prove your worth to the company in respect to the new position. Promotions thus will not be awarded based on me
Why We Crumble Under Pressure (Score:3)
Why Do We Crumble Under Pressure?
Because we're pussies.
:^)
Not really the answer to anything (Score:5, Interesting)
So, they did a study, got a result which is inherently valid (it's just measured data), then drew inferential conclusions which I submit are all bogus and over-reaching, or else didn't overreach their inferences, instead left that to sensational "journalists".
Why do we crumble under pressure? Like all complex psychomotor behavioral activities, it is complex, with levels of complexity we have yet to discover or even understand the relevance of. The brain remains a big mystery despite all the reams of tangible anatomical-physiological studies and the (sometimes/often questionable or bogus) "psychological" studies.
Article is pay-walled, but a summary is at:
Smoulder, A. L. et al. Neuron https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neur... [doi.org] (2024).
Here are things I find askew:
- They gave the monkeys high high value rewards as incentive to do certain things. To me, that is the impetus for impulsive behavior, not "choking under pressure". It is why people keep feeding slot machines or place sports bets, even when rationally they know that "the house" will likely win. It was just the wrong way to test what they wanted. That does not invalidate or discredit what they did, but if their interpretation of their premises or predicates is at odds with reality, valid data can still lead to wrong analysis and conclusions.
- In the paper summary:
The researchers found that, in jackpot scenarios, the activity of neurons associated with motor preparation decreased. Motor preparation is the brain's way of making calculations about how to complete a movement.
Motor preparation is known to engage populations of neurons in the primary motor cortex (MC) and the dorsal aspect of the premotor cortex (referred to collectively here as MC).
When you want to do something (physical movement), the pre-motor area helps sort out or translate your psychological or volitional intent into instructions for the primary motor cortex which has the upper motor neurons (pmc/umn's). The pmc/umn's basically tell the periphery which muscle groups are to be activated or inhibited. The umn's have output axons that run down the spinal cord to various levels where they synapse to the lower motor neurons which translate that information into activation signals for individual muscles which are distributed through the peripheral nerves that emanate from the spinal cord.
The experiment recorded activity in the premotor and motor areas, but that is not where intent or reactional responses such as "crumble under pressure" are generated. Those come from deeper, higher (frontal), and more diffuse underlying networks in the brain.
- They inferred that suppressed, weakened, or sedated responses in these neurons represents a psychologically negative inhibition, "crumble under pressure", but I would dispute that. Maybe these neurons were in a less excited state, less than a supra-normal state, because the promise of a reward was a happy anticipatory event, the opposite of the "fright: flight or fight" scenarios that could lead to "crumble under pressure". Maybe their semantics and choice of words is idiosyncratically different than my understanding of those words, but one way or another, it doesn't add up to common sense understanding of these complex behaviors.
In the end, it is just another experiment, a grain of sand in the beach of knowledge about the CNS and animal behavior, something that might someday fit into the giant jigsaw puzzle of how the brain works. But it is in no way "science has the answer" to anything.
Just another slow news day on the science desk.
Too bad we can't experiment on humans (Score:2)
I know that it would be unethical and inhumane to do this experiment on humans. But it sure would be interesting to test human psychopaths to see if, when the stakes are high, their brains are less susceptible to the 'choking' response.
Curse you brain (Score:2)
Making it difficult to perform in interviews
Crumble? the opposite (Score:1)
Many people like me do our very best work under high pressure. Then we get terrible health effects, and the amount of damage and ills gets worse as we age.
TL;DR: because you actually care (Score:2)
We conclude that neural signals of reward and motor preparation interact in the motor cortex (MC) in a manner that can explain why we choke under pressure.
The fact that a brain is taking time to observe the outcome (ergo, reward mechanism activation) interferes with motor preparation. If this is true then it seems that being indifferent to the outcome or being highly focused on the task will make you less likely to "choke".
This does make me wonder how this relates to fight/flight/freeze reactions.
Well (Score:2)
When you don't know what to do, doing nothing, at least briefly, is frequently the best response.
No, not always ... but nature rewards "frequently" in the long run.
Training (Score:2)
wow great "science" (Score:1)
nonlinearity! that's a science word!
i hope this can be used to optimally adjust salaries closer to $0.
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Simple enough implications. (Score:2)