Choking under pressure and working memory capacity: When performance pressure reduces fluid intelligence

Gimmig, David; Huguet, Pascal; Caverni, Jean-Paul; Cury, François · 2006 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03213916

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

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Summary

This study investigates whether "choking under pressure"—the phenomenon where high-stakes situations impair performance—is limited to tasks involving acquired skills or if it also affects fluid intelligence (Gf). Building on prior research by Beilock and Carr (2005), which found that individuals with high working memory capacity (WMC) are uniquely susceptible to choking on math problems, the authors sought to generalize these findings to Gf. They hypothesized that performance pressure consumes the cognitive resources high-WMC individuals rely on for complex reasoning, thereby reducing their fluid intelligence scores. The study also aimed to address limitations in previous research by isolating the mechanism of pressure, measuring anxiety directly, and controlling for participants' self-perceived abilities. The researchers tested 67 undergraduate students with backgrounds in math and science. Working memory capacity was measured using the Reading Span Task (RSPAN) before the pressure manipulation to avoid contamination. Participants were then assigned to either a high-pressure or low-pressure condition. In the high-pressure condition, the task (Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices) was described as a diagnostic measure of analytic reasoning linked to academic success; in the low-pressure condition, it was described as a measure of attentional and perceptual capacities. The study measured performance accuracy and inspection times on both low-demand (visuospatial) and high-demand (verbal-analytic) matrix problems. Additionally, participants reported their state anxiety and self-handicapping tendencies. The results confirmed that choking under pressure extends to fluid intelligence. On high-demand problems, high-WMC individuals significantly outperformed low-WMC individuals in the low-pressure condition but suffered a performance decrement in the high-pressure condition, eliminating their advantage. Low-WMC individuals’ performance remained stable or slightly improved under pressure. Statistical analysis revealed that this interaction was mediated by state anxiety: high-WMC individuals reported significantly higher anxiety under pressure than low-WMC individuals, whereas low-WMC individuals reported higher feelings of handicap but not anxiety. Crucially, the negative impact of pressure on high-WMC performance was specific to high-demand, verbal-analytic problems, not low-demand ones. These findings imply that performance pressure disproportionately hinders those with the highest cognitive potential by triggering anxiety that consumes working memory resources. This has significant implications for assessments in academic, clinical, and occupational settings, where high-stakes testing is common. The study suggests that such tests may fail to distinguish between individuals of different intellectual capacities because pressure-induced choking levels the playing field, causing high-ability individuals to perform similarly to lower-ability ones. Consequently, the test situation itself is an integral part of cognitive functioning, and assessments must account for the anxiety-inducing nature of high-stakes environments to accurately measure fluid intelligence.

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Topics

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• cognitive capacity variation
• stress arousal performance