For any of us who have ever

blanked on a math test after

days of studying, or wracked

our minds for hours looking

for the perfect final sentence

for a paper, Sian Beilock has a suggestion:

Don’t over think it. An associate professor

in the Department of Psychology, Beilock

made a name for herself investigating the

impact of stress on human performance.

Beilock and her team found that skilled

athletes largely run on auto-pilot, but when

they over-analyze that next free throw or

putt, they’re more likely to cave to pres-

sure. Singing to themselves, among other

tricks, helps athletes keep their cool, she

found.

Beilock's research has shown that clutch

performances and agonizing chokes aren’t

limited to places like the United Center or

Wrigley Field. For every Michael Jordan

at Madison Square Garden or Jean Van

de Velde at golf ’s Open Championship,

Beilock says there are countless other, more

mundane moments when people succeed or

fail based on the same kind of pressure and

mental presence. For a closer look at the

psychology of choking and the business of

helping people keep their cool, Grey Citycaught up with Beilock last month in her

Green Hall laboratory.

GREY CITY: You write about famous ath-

letes like Shaquille O’Neal, Sam Snead, and

Maria Sharapova throwing away big leads.

Have you talked to any of them since your

book, Choke, was published?

SIAN BEILOCK: There are a few athletes in

the book whose sports psychologists—the

people who work one-on-one with them—

have said “I really want to give your book

to them, but can I cut out that page?” I can’t

name names, but definitely a lot of the ath-

letes in the book know about it. I often talk

to coaches, Olympic coaches, or coaches

of professional athletes and I think they’re

really interested in this idea that there are

simple psychological tools we can use to

produce our best performances.

GC: Do you get calls or e-mails from non-

athletes looking for help about choking?

SB: I’ve had some interesting ones about

people who are artists or painters who

feel like they get up to the canvas and

can’t paint or write. [When] we talk about

choking under pressure, we think of these

canonical situations, like the Olympics

or the job interview, but there are activi-

ties that we do on a daily basis that we

can perform poorly on when under stress.

Whether it’s being a writer and not being

able to write, or parallel parking in front of

your spouse, or giving a toast at a wedding,

or ending up in the elevator for two min-

utes with your boss and trying not to look

like a fool, there’s all these situations that,

although they’re not for a gold medal, can

really show some of the same characteris-

tics of flubs under pressure.

GC: What’s your all-time favorite choke?

SB: I think one that always stands out for

me is Sarah Palin’s Katie Couric interview. I

think that is really a great example of where

she just hadn’t practiced. It was rumored

that she hadn’t let the handlers quiz her

and get her ready. That’s just in such con-

trast to someone like Obama, in terms of

how he handles giving speeches or ques-

tions from reporters, he spends a lot of time

practicing.

I did a TV show the other day where

I had to read off of a teleprompter and

it’s actually really hard. It’s been reported

that Obama spends lots of time reading

off teleprompters and practicing such that

he seems very fluent in these sorts of situ-

ations. It struck me that it was a skill that

needed to be acquired.

GC: In your book you write about giving

talks to business leaders. How do your

psychological methods mesh with their

corporate attitudes?

SB: I think a lot of what I recommend is

counter-intuitive, but it’s simple, so it’s

appealing. Whether it’s writing about your

worries, or realizing that in putting groups

of people together everyone shouldn’t have

the same expertise—we know that two heads

with different sorts of backgrounds are bet-

ter than one—or realizing that even though

you have a lot of knowledge, you may not

be able to predict how a consumer who’s

never seen your product will handle it.

I think that a lot of this is stuff they

hadn’t thought about before, and the idea

that you can give them some facts and ways

to ensure better performance is enticing to

them. Especially some of the techniques

where it’s training under stress for an emer-

gency situation, or getting ready for a pre-

sentation, people have told me that these

techniques are really effective in terms of

whatever they’re trying to accomplish.

I had an executive tell me about an

anthrax scare at his company and how

even though they had gone over drills and

procedures, when it actually happened, no

one performed the way they were supposed

to. From that [I realized] they had actually

practiced, [but] had just talked about it.

Actually practicing what you might do in

a do-or-die situation and upping the ante a

bit is an important part. Since then, they’ve

implemented those actual drills.

GC: You were a competitive lacrosse player

before becoming an academic. Did you ever

choke on the field or at a desk?

SB: I never took tests in the real situation

as well as I did in practice tests, whether

it was the SAT or the GRE. And there

are definitely performances in the ath-

letic world where I never played as well as

I could have in front of Olympic coaches

or college recruiters, so I think I’ve always

been keenly aware that subtle environmen-

tal conditions can change your ability to

show what you know or how you play.

G C: W h a t w a s y o u r i m p r e s s i o n o f

Christina Aguilera’s version of the “Star-

Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl?

SB: I mean, it was obvious that she had

messed up the words, but she kept on going

very fluidly, which I think speaks to the fact

that she’s a very practiced performer.

That’s an example that I’d liken to when

Chief Justice Roberts swore in Obama and

he messed up. This is something that’s so

well practiced, and you get in front of all

these people and you just pay a little too

much attention to what you’re saying, and

all of a sudden it seems to go out the win-

dow.

GC: With your heightened knowledge

about choking, how do you deal with the

phenomenon in your own classroom?

SB: I try and have multiple tests so that

everything isn’t riding on one performance.

And I talk to my students about some of

the tips I talk about in the book as a way to

study and get ready. So this idea that if you

just read over your notes, you might not

have a good idea of what you’re going to be

able to show on a test, but actually getting

together in a study group and testing each

other, getting used to some of those stress-

ful situations, that also helps you under-

stand what you do and don’t know. I try to

get them ready in that way.

GC: How do you think the curve of stan-

dardized tests is thrown by instances of

choking?

SB: We know that a lot of these tests don’t

have great predictive validity, so the SAT,

for example, and the GRE don’t predict

performance much past first quarter grades.

And one of the reasons I think this is the

case is because you don’t always get a good

metric of what students know or their abili-

ties from these tests because factors like the

situation are impacting some students and

not others. So in the book I talk about this

idea that those students with the most gen-

eral intellectual abilities—the most cognitive

horsepower, which is one of the building

blocks of IQ—tend to be the most likely

to choke. And what you have is a testing

situation where you’re truncating the distri-

bution such that those people who should

be performing at the top are performing

lower.

I think this research highlights the dan-

gers of relying too heavily on these scores

as predictors of future success. This is

especially true if you think about minority

groups or women in the math and sciences.

A lot of the work I talk about in the book

suggests that people can perform below

their potential because they’re just aware

of stereotypes of how they should perform,

because of their ethnic group or their gen-

der group.

What this suggests to me is that if we

have these groups systematically perform-

ing below their potential, we’re missing

potential segments of the population that

might be earmarked to go on and succeed

in future activities.

GC: How has your research weighed in on

your ideas about parenting, now that you’re

expecting?

SB: Well, it’s a girl, and there’s a whole

chapter in there about gender differences in

performance, so I’m very acutely aware of

these sorts of things. I think that one thing

that the book hopefully gets across is that

a lot of the differences we see later on in

terms of selection into math and sciences

and things like that can be traced back to

exposure and experiences early on. I’m a

big proponent of having Legos and puzzles

for girls as well as boys. I guess I was raised

pretty gender-neutral, so I’ll probably do

the same.

I don’t think I have a philosophy yet;

everyone asks me what my child-rearing

philosophy is, and I’m sometimes stressed

out that I don’t have one. [Laughs.]

GC: One of the t ips in your book to

improve performance is to write about your

anxieties for 10-15 minutes before a big

test. Have you written down your anxieties

about parenting?

SB: It hasn’t gotten to that point yet! I

guess I’ve become more aware of the fact

that kids are really influenced by their

teachers, by their parents, by the stresses

around them, and a lot of academic situa-

tions in this day and age are pressure cook-

ers, especially early on. So I would want to

ensure that emphasis gets placed on learn-

ing and knowledge rather than just perfor-

mance on a test.

—Christina Pillsbury

KEEP CALM& CARRY ON

A Q&A with Sian BeilockDARREN LEOW/GREY CITY

8 CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY | March 8, 2011