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performance
You perform worse when you try to consciously control movement.
Studies on 'choking under pressure' show that focusing on automatic movements impairs skill execution.
The conscious processing hypothesis suggests that pressure forces you to monitor well-learned motor skills. By attempting to consciously guide actions that have become procedural, you disrupt the brain's efficient execution loop. You move from fluid, rapid performance to jerky, error-prone execution.
Thinking about how you do something is often the best way to fail at it.
Where this comes from
- Study
- conscious processing hypothesis
- What the check found
- The claim accurately reflects the mechanism described in the literature, often cited as Explicit Monitoring Theory or the Conscious Processing Hypothesis.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.