Even though it was decades ago, I still remember my first studio class at Juilliard. I was set to play the 5th Paganini Caprice, which I knew well, and had performed before in auditions and competitions. Yet I was feeling strangely nervous for this studio class, even though there wasn’t really anything at stake.
Long story short, it did not go well. I rushed, played out of tune, flat-out missed a bunch of notes in the opening arpeggios, and kept fumbling little things throughout.
It was, as my kids would say, an “epic fail” (and yes, there’s a YouTube channel for that 😆). And I was embarrassed that this was the first impression everyone would have of me.
If you’ve ever had a similar experience you may have wondered the same thing I did. Namely, what causes this sort of “choking” under pressure?
Is anxiety to blame?
At the time, I blamed my nerves. It’s an easy target, and nerves do play a role. But in a sneakier way than you might think.
Because sure, anxiety’s physical effects are unpleasant and not necessarily helpful. But it’s what anxiety does to our attention and focus that may be a more important factor in choking.
How so?
Not all pressure is created equal
It might seem like pressure is pressure, but a team of researchers (DeCaro et al., 2011) observed that not all pressure is quite the same.
In some situations, pressure comes from an attachment to a specific outcome, like winning first chair at a summer festival seating audition, or a prize at a major competition. This is known as “outcome pressure.”
In other situations, pressure comes from the fact that we are being watched and evaluated by other people. That is, “monitoring pressure.”
And sometimes, we experience both.
And why does this matter?
Two competing theories
Well, let’s take a step back for a moment.
There are two sets of theories that seem to explain why we choke under pressure. Both make intuitive sense. There is evidence to support both theories. But…the theories propose mechanisms that are almost the opposite of each other.
Theory #1: Distraction theories
One theory suggests that under pressure, our focus goes away from the music to irrelevant thoughts. Like thinking about the other people in the room, and worrying about what they might think if we play poorly.
But since our brain can think about only so much at once, the relevant and irrelevant thoughts end up competing for our limited attentional resources, and something has to give.
For instance, playing solo Bach was always a challenge for me, not just because of the technical difficulty, but because I was always a little worried about the potential for memory issues1.
But ironically, the more I worried about having a memory slip, the more likely I was to have one, because these worries prevented me from thinking about my memory cues and staying in the moment.
Theory #2: Explicit monitoring theories
The other theory suggests that under pressure, our attention shifts to the physical execution of motor movements, and we try to micromanage all the individual steps instead of trusting our “muscle memory” to take care of the job.
The problem of course, is that once a skill becomes automatic, thinking about what exactly your thumb, elbow, wrist, and fingers are doing at each step of a tricky shift totally screws up your ability to execute what should be a fluid, effortless motion.
If you’ve ever had to sit or stand on camera, and were told to “just act natural,” you know how difficult it can be to do this when you’re suddenly all self-conscious and don’t remember how to stand like a normal person.
To sum up…
So in a nutshell, distraction theories suggest that we choke because our attention goes away from the task, while explicit monitoring theories suggest that we screw up because our attention goes toward the task.
So which is it? I mean, both can’t be right, can they?
Why both theories might be equally valid
Well, maybe they can.
What if the reason why both theories have data to back them up, is that the cause of choking depends on what kind of pressure we experience?
For instance, tasks which require a decent amount of working memory (the mental scratch pad that we use to keep certain things in mind – like listening to our pianist, or making sure we take the right turn in our Bach) might suffer in response to outcome pressure. Where instead of focusing on the music, we are distracted by worries, and this leads to choking.
On the flip side, highly automated skills – like difficult shifts and technical passages – might be more susceptible to choking when we experience monitoring pressure and think too much about technical execution.
A study!
To test this theory, the researchers designed a series of studies that presented participants with two challenges.
Task #1 was a relatively simple task, but required conscious attention and working memory for participants to be successful. So, if participants were distracted, their performance would suffer.
Task #2 was more complex, and was designed to operate on a more implicit level, outside of conscious awareness. So, being distracted wouldn’t make much of a difference in their performance, but paying too much attention to each step of their process definitely would.
Two types of pressure
Everyone performed the task under no pressure to get a baseline of their performance.
And then, one group of participants was told that if they and a partner could each improve their performance by 20%, they would both win money. They were informed that their partner had already met that criteria, so the prize money was all riding on their performance (outcome pressure).
Another group was told that their performance would be watched and videotaped, and that footage would be watched by other students and professors at the university, and possibly used in a film distributed nationwide for other researchers and psychology classes (monitoring pressure).
The results were pretty revealing.
Pressure type predicts choking
When participants were worried about letting down their partner (outcome pressure), their performance on the more attention-heavy Task #1 suffered. But this type of pressure had no impact on Task #2 performance – the more “proceduralized” skill that could be executed outside of conscious awareness.
On the other hand, when participants knew they were being watched (monitoring pressure), they seemed to overthink the steps of Task #2, and their performance went downhill. Performance on Task #1, on the other hand, did not change.
Double jeopardy
Taken together, the results suggest that there is not just one pathway to epic fails, but two paths!
Choking pathway #1: When a task requires that we be really focused on what we’re doing (like performing from memory), but outcome pressure kicks in and we worry about messing up instead of staying focused on the task at hand, we’re susceptible to choking.
Choking pathway #2: And when a task requires that we not overthink highly automated skills that operate best outside of conscious awareness (pretty much everything we do on our instruments), but monitoring pressure swoops in, we’re prone to choking yet again.
Argh! So what are we to do?
The right kind of focus
Conceptually, it all boils down to training ourselves to maintain a very specific kind of focus and attention control on stage.
Worry about the situation, our nerves, our memory, etc., and we’re no longer thinking about the music. Which is asking for trouble.
Obsess too much about technical execution, and we’re suddenly running complex motor movements on manual mode instead of relying on our inner autopilot to do the job – even though that’s what we spend all those hours in the practice room training it to do. And this creates problems too.
So the key, is to do what great musicians and teachers have often advised us to do on stage.
To focus less on technical execution (to protect ourselves from monitoring pressure) and more on musical expression (to counteract outcome pressure).
Like, the sound we want to produce. The shaping of each line. The character of each little gesture. The underlying rhythmic pulse, and the subtle nuances of phrasing.
How understanding this fundamentally changes practice
This is easier said than done, of course, when our heart is pounding in our chest, our thoughts are racing, and our inner critic gets really loud!
Fortunately, managing our nerves and improving our ability to focus and quiet our mind under pressure are learnable skills that we can absolutely get better at. And not only do these skills make performing a more positive and consistently rewarding experience, but many (myself included) find that this makes practicing more fun as well. 😁
To that end, I’ll be teaching a live online 4-week group class in February on the most essential practice and performance skills that I wish I would have learned decades ago, and that I wish all musicians could have at their disposal.
Through a combination of weekly Zoom sessions, implementation homework, and a bit of public support and accountability, you’ll not only learn how to practice in ways that will shrink the gap between practice and performance, but you’ll also learn a series of skills that will enable you to manage nerves more effectively, perform more confidently, and get into the zone more consistently.
Over 2000 musicians, educators, and learners of all ages and levels have participated in the class to date. You can get all the details on class dates and times and read what alumni have said about the experience, right here:
About Performance Psych Essentials
Additional Resources
If you (or your students) would prefer the 4-min animated version of why we choke under pressure, here’s a TED-Ed video I helped put together: How to stay calm under pressure
And if you’d like to get into this a bit deeper, researcher/author/Dartmouth College president Sian Beilock has a great TED talk on choking: Why we choke under pressure – and how to avoid it
References
DeCaro, M. S., Thomas, R. D., Albert, N. B., & Beilock, S. L. (2011). Choking under pressure: Multiple routes to skill failure. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 140(3), 390–406. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023466
Excellent post, Noa! I wish my cello teacher was still alive so I could discuss this with her; I’ve struggled with performance anxiety (including some memorable choking stints) for all of the 23 years I’ve been playing, and her solution, once I became an adult, was just not to require me to perform anymore. While that was a relief, it comes at the cost of improved performance skills. Luckily for me, as you mentioned, teachers are (were) always telling us to focus on expression. While I also struggle with expression and phrasing now, having lost my teacher, your post about the choking study is the perfect dovetail of those threads and gives me a new lens to use when I’m working on pieces on my own. So thank you for that.
My teacher use to say, “The musical will protects us from the fear of messing up.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbecIBvR3mE
“Too many mind”
Here’s something interesting: If you are trying to teach someone how to play guitar, for example, and you basically are self-taught, then all those details that you never really properly learned and would have had to focus on, come to the forefront. My self-taught guitar playing evolved over 50+ years, and I only let myself be guided by the ‘sound:’ My aim was to try to duplicate what I heard my favorite guitar players (playing some of my favorite pieces) doing. As I came as close as possible to what I heard on their recordings, I was pleased – and reached my goals. I could soon forget the details and just enjoy the songs I was playing – for myself and audiences. I often (almost accidently) discovered nuances I could add also – and thereby somewhat make those songs ‘my own’ – great ego boosting experiences!!!
I may have read this article in the past but I will again. Before I do I wanted to add, lately I’ve been thinking that the way we’re usually approaching this issue maybe missing the point.
I think the performance anxiety might be all about our ego. How will the others perceive us when they’re listening to us perform (or watching in the sports). So, the question to ask maybe shouldn’t be about how to calm us down. Rather, how to remove “me” during the performance. Who knows, this might be already in the article, lol, but it’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.
Indeed! Easier said than done, of course, but finding a way to focus our attention away from ourself and our self-worth in that moment of performance seems to be very beneficial.