Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Marshall brand with today's question, what causes
Speaker 1: someone to choke under pressure? Anyone who watched the Master's
Speaker 1: Tournament this year or who followed the tournament in the
Speaker 1: news knows that there was a shocking breakdown by Rory
Speaker 1: McElroy during his final nine holes. He played well through
Speaker 1: three and a half rounds or sixty three holes, and
Speaker 1: then he choked. It was as though he had forgotten
Speaker 1: how to hit a golf ball. And if you've ever
Speaker 1: played golf, you know that this isn't an exceedingly uncommon event. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, professionals choked quite often in golf, and you
Speaker 1: yourself may have experienced it on the golf course where
Speaker 1: you go to hit a ball and you can't hit
Speaker 1: it straight to save yourself, and then you try to
Speaker 1: correct that you can't, you'll get the second shot anywhere
Speaker 1: where you want it to be, and suddenly you have
Speaker 1: forgotten how to play golf. Or you might have experienced
Speaker 1: it in a public speaking situation where you can't make
Speaker 1: words come out of your mouth, or you might have
Speaker 1: gone into a test and choked and couldn't find the
Speaker 1: answer to any question on the test. Or you might
Speaker 1: have met particularly attractive member of the human species that
Speaker 1: you would like to get to know better, and when
Speaker 1: you go to talk to him or her, you can't
Speaker 1: get any words out of your mouth that that sound
Speaker 1: anything other than ridiculous. Or and this one is really common,
Speaker 1: you go to be on a TV show for the
Speaker 1: first time and this question pops into your head. What
Speaker 1: am I supposed to do with my hands? And you've
Speaker 1: never had a problem with your hands before. You've lived
Speaker 1: your whole life without thinking about what to do with
Speaker 1: your hands, But suddenly, with a TV camera focused on you,
Speaker 1: you don't know what it is that you're supposed to
Speaker 1: do with your hands, and it becomes an amazing source
Speaker 1: of confusion for you. The point is that human beings
Speaker 1: choke all the time. This is a very common phenomenon
Speaker 1: for human beings, and the question is what causes people
Speaker 1: to choke? What is going on when we choke in
Speaker 1: a high pressure situation or any situation where we're trying
Speaker 1: to get a good outcome rather than a bad one.
Speaker 1: There is some excellent material on the web that talks
Speaker 1: about choking, and if you want to google it. You
Speaker 1: can google brain stuff how choking works to find links
Speaker 1: in a couple of videos that that show the process
Speaker 1: of choking. But one article in particular is called the
Speaker 1: Psychology of choking, and it explains it this way. There
Speaker 1: are two different ways that we can do things with
Speaker 1: our bodies in the real world. One way is under
Speaker 1: conscious control and the other way is under unconscious control.
Speaker 1: So you are using the conscious process. Whenever you're learning something,
Speaker 1: you know you're let's say you're learning to drive a
Speaker 1: stick shift car. You are sitting there and you have
Speaker 1: to consciously think about taking your foot off the gas,
Speaker 1: putting your foot onto the clutch, moving the gearshift knob,
Speaker 1: and then reversing that taking your foot off the clutch
Speaker 1: while you apply the gas smoothly. And you're doing all
Speaker 1: that consciously, and it's hard. It takes time, and it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of thought, and it's frustrating, and you
Speaker 1: mash the gears and and stuff is difficult. If you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to drive a back ho for the first time,
Speaker 1: you run into the same exact thing where you know,
Speaker 1: if you could just move your arm the way you
Speaker 1: wanted the back ho to move, it would be trivially
Speaker 1: simple to drive a back hoe, but you're doing it
Speaker 1: with these two levers that have four positions each, and
Speaker 1: you have to consciously think, let's see, if I want
Speaker 1: to extend the arm outward, I have to move this
Speaker 1: lever in this direction. And that is the conscious way
Speaker 1: of doing things. Then the other way is, after lots
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of practice, you can drive a
Speaker 1: stick shift car without thinking about it, or you if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a really good backhoe operator do his
Speaker 1: or her thing, they can make a backhoe move just
Speaker 1: like it's their arm. It's an extension of their body.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievably precise and smooth, and you know, even could
Speaker 1: be delicate if it needs to be. They they a
Speaker 1: good backhoad driver is an amazing person to watch. So
Speaker 1: you have these two systems, the conscious system, which is
Speaker 1: kind of slow and messy and frustrating, and the unconscious
Speaker 1: system where you literally don't even have to think about it.
Speaker 1: You just are doing your thing well. The article The
Speaker 1: Psychology of Choking explains that what happens when you choke
Speaker 1: is that, through essentially overthinking, you override or you disable
Speaker 1: the un conscious system that has allowed you to perform well.
Speaker 1: And whatever it is you're doing, let's say talking, you
Speaker 1: normally talk unconsciously, and when you get into a public
Speaker 1: speaking situation, that breaks down. When you're trying to be
Speaker 1: on TV and you don't know what to do with
Speaker 1: your hands, You've always dealt with your hands unconsciously, and now, uh,
Speaker 1: that breaks down. The golfing case, they've been golfing, you know,
Speaker 1: through years of practice, they can golf unconsciously. It's all
Speaker 1: wired into the brain. And what happens when you choke
Speaker 1: is that unconscious system gets overridden by the conscious system
Speaker 1: and you revert back to the conscious system for doing things.
Speaker 1: The unconscious system is essentially lost. And this is why
Speaker 1: when you're in this choking situation, everything looks so uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and unnatural and stilted, because the conscious system is like that.
Speaker 1: If you're having to use your conscious brain to think
Speaker 1: through the motions, it just doesn't work. This leads you
Speaker 1: to wonder, maybe what can you do if you ever
Speaker 1: find yourself in a situation where you're choking and you
Speaker 1: need to unchoke, you need to perform in a normal way,
Speaker 1: then the solution might be to relax and find a
Speaker 1: way to turn off your conscious mind again, you know,
Speaker 1: breathing deeply or meditating for a short period of time
Speaker 1: or something to just shut down the conscious side to
Speaker 1: relieve the pressure so that you're unconscious can take over
Speaker 1: again and start doing what it does well, automatically doing
Speaker 1: the task at hand. If you'd like to learn more
Speaker 1: about this again, you can google brain stuff how choking works,
Speaker 1: and it will lead you to some videos and a
Speaker 1: really good article on the topic. For moral on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how staff works
Speaker 1: dot com