I am amazed that anyone would argue that there is no such thing as a "clutch" athlete. My colleagues and I have administered the Reiss Motivation Profile to many athletes at all levels of competition. We interpret a number of test results as relevant to performance under stress. Here are some examples.
Anxiety sensitivity refers to how dangerous a person thinks anxiety sensations and behaviors are. People with high anxiety sensitivity, for example, react to a pounding heart by worrying about an impending heart attack. People with low anxiety sensitivity dismiss a pounding heart as a harmless indicator of anxiety that will dissipate when the stressful situation is resolved. High anxiety sensitivity is an early predictor of panic attacks and various other conditions, such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. The construct was validated in more than 1,250 published studies, many conducted by people who had argued that the construct is invalid but reversed their position based on the results of their own studies. If you want to know who is prone to panic or extreme fear and could ask only one question, ask the person how unhealthy it is when your heart starts pounding.
In our professional work with athletes, we assume that anxiety sensitivity predicts an athlete's performance under stress. How could it be otherwise? One player goes to the plate at a stressful moment during a baseball game, notices that his heart is pounding, starts to worry about his health, and becomes more anxious perhaps spiraling upward to something approaching panic. The other player ignores his pounding heart. How could such a difference in reaction to stress not impact performance?
The "need for acceptance" is my term for what some might call the fear of failure. Since failure hurts less when people do not try, people who are sensitive to failure tend to hold back effort. Others notice their inconsistent effort and think they are moody and pessimistic. On psychological assessments people with a high need for acceptance test with little self-confidence. In contrast, people who are insensitive to failure give consistent effort effort and tend to be self-confident and optimistic. The difference between an athlete who fears failure versus one who does not is so great it is hard to imagine how it could not affect reactions to stress.
The fear of failure and fear of anxiety are distinct traits. The correlation is about .31.
Under stress people tend to revert to old habits. An aggressive athlete, for example, might commit penalties under stress even though he/she would not be expected to "choke." An organized athlete might perform rituals under stress, while a curious athlete might analyze the situation at hand.
I don't understand the statistical studies Jeff Wise alludes to in his blog. At the professional level, most athletes will be low anxiety sensitivity and low need for acceptance, which would restrict the variance and possibly obliterate valid correlations. The way to test these ideas rigorously is to compare players with high and low anxiety sensitivity, and players with high and low fear of failure, in terms of how much their individual performance is impaired by different levels of stress. In our professional work, athletes agree with our test results about 85 percent of the time.
