Commentators profess surprise when figure-skating champions like Michelle Kwan fumble.
Psychologists, for their part, might point to "choking"—failing to execute previously mastered tasks—to describe the tumbles taken by many athletes.
Researchers at Michigan State University believe they have a handle on choking: It is not caused by distraction, as some had surmised, but by an inability to handle stress.
Thomas Carr, Ph.D., a professor of psychology, and doctoral student Sian Beilock offered two groups of golfers money if they could improve their putt. They upped the ante by convincing subjects that everything hinged on performance alone (they were paired with a partner who had ostensibly met the target score). One group was exposed to distractions during practice, and this group did not choke under pressure.
But the golfers who rehearsed without distractions choked during the evaluation.
