Merely preparing to give a speech that will be evaluated by others can be enough to send most people's anxiety skyrocketing, as psychologist Tor Wager and his colleagues at Columbia University have recently shown. Wager was interested in what happened in the brain in the run-up to a pressure-filled public speaking situation so he put Columbia students in an fMRI and informed them that they would be given a few minutes to mentally prepare two different speeches - one on the effects of interest rates on stock prices and the other on the relationship between tariffs and free trade. The students were told that they would be presenting the speeches to a panel of experts in law and business and that a computer analysis program used to grade college-level essays would also score what they said. In reality, and to the students' relief, they never had to give the speeches, but they didn't know this until they exited the scanner.
While lying in the fMRI machine preparing their speeches, students' heart rates were continuously monitored and they were asked to report, about every 20 seconds, how much anxiety they were feeling at that time. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that the anticipation of giving a speech changed people's heart rates and reported anxiety levels. Moreover, activation in areas of the prefrontal cortex explained the link between speech anticipation and anxiety (especially so for those who viewed the speech preparation task as most anxiety-provoking in the first place). When getting ready to give a speech, the more activity in these prefrontal regions, the more anxious people were.
One interpretation of Wager's findings is that the more people dwelled on what others would think - the more they anticipated the panel of experts' reactions - the more anxious they became. Keep in mind that these brain changes occurred before students had done anything. This suggests that the anticipation of an event, and specifically the anticipation of others judging you, is enough to up the pressure before you have even arrived at the performance stage. If the end result is a flubbed performance, then we have somewhat of a recursive cycle on our hands. Your worry about how others will judge you, which may lead to poor performance, which leads to more worry the next time you are in a public speaking situation, and so on.
Performance anxieties that stem from how others may judge you are of course not limited to public speaking. High expectations for success and the possibility that you will be evaluated poorly can lead to disastrous consequences not only in the boardroom, but in the bedroom too. As we have seen from Tor Wager's work, even when students are merely preparing to give speech, a variety of brain and body reactions occur that can send people down a path to failure. These sorts of anticipation effects likely happen in the ultimate performance situation, sex, as well.
A friend of mine told me about a long-distance relationship he once had with a woman in college. They liked each other a lot but unfortunately lived in different cities and were only able to spend one weekend a month together. My friend awaited the monthly encounters with his girlfriend with trepidation: knowing how little time they could spend together, he wanted every second of this time to be amazing. In the bedroom, all the anticipation translated into pressure to perform, which needless to say, immediately backfired. Sometimes, his brain and body would just shut down and sex became the last thing in the world he desired, while other times he was so worked up that the "amazing time" only lasted a couple of seconds.
Although poor performance in the bedroom is clearly undesirable and unpleasant, my friend might have been interested to know that his problem has a long evolutionary history and that, for much of this history, it wasn't a problem at all. It turns out that the relationship between anxiety and premature ejaculation is not unique to human males but is experienced by some monkeys as well. In a monkey species called rhesus macaque, males at the bottom of the social hierarchy have to hide from the alpha male while they mate because if they get caught, they will be attacked and beaten up mercilessly. As a result, when low status males approach a female who looks available, they look very nervous and constantly glance at the alpha male to check if he is looking. If the alpha male happens to be turned the other way, the low status male can mount the female, ejaculate, and disappear from the scene - all in a couple of seconds. This is in contrast to the dominant males who can take quite a long time to finish. So, these rhesus macaques show us why premature ejaculation really happens. If you are a subordinate male - either monkey or human - premature ejaculation is the best way, or maybe the only way, to inseminate a female.
Of course, if your goal isn't procreation, you may not really care whether your problem has an evolutionary history or not. You may just want to fix it. In this case, knowing some of the factors that lead to poor performance may help. Interestingly, many of the same factors that influence public speaking success are also at work in the bedroom. For instance, as Wager's research shows, thinking about it ahead of time and worrying about the outcome, can have dire consequences for performance. Moreover, stress from other aspects of life can seep in and distract folks from the task at hand. Finally, spouses can be supportive in the sack and increase the probability of success or be unsupportive and, just like before a big speech, this lack of support can backfire.
For more factors that influence all kinds of performance, and tips for success under stress, check out my new book CHOKE. In stores today!
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Maestripieri, D. (2007). Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World.
Wager, T. D. et al. (2009). Brain mediators of cardiovascular responses to social threat, part II: Prefrontal-subcortical pathways and relationship with anxiety. Neuroimage, 47, 836-851.
