ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Monkeys exhibit a paradoxical decrease in performance in high-stakes scenarios.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Linking reaction time variability to physiological markers of arousal across timescales.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Reward influences movement vigor through multiple motor cortical mechanisms.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Reward signals in the motor cortex: from biology to neurotechnology.Nature communications · 2025Review
- A neural basis of choking under pressure.Neuron · 2024Article
- Pre-movement muscle co-contraction associated with motor performance deterioration under high reward conditions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Common Mechanisms of Learning in Motor and Cognitive Systems.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Review
- Under pressure: the interaction between high-stakes contexts and individual differences in decision-making in humans and non-human species.Animal cognition · 2023Review
- Toward a neurobiological model of human performance under pressure.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Monkeys exhibit a paradoxical decrease in performance in high-stakes scenarios.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In high-stakes situations, people sometimes exhibit a frustrating phenomenon known as "choking under pressure." Usually, we perform better when the potential payoff is larger. However, once potential rewards get too high, performance paradoxically decreases-we "choke." Why do we choke under pressure? An animal model of choking would facilitate the investigation of its neural basis. However, it could be that choking is a uniquely human occurrence. To determine whether animals also choke, we trained three rhesus monkeys to perform a difficult reaching task in which they knew in advance the amount of reward to be given upon successful completion. Like humans, monkeys performed worse when potential rewards were exceptionally valuable. Failures that occurred at the highest level of reward were due to overly cautious reaching, in line with the psychological theory that explicit monitoring of behavior leads to choking. Our results demonstrate that choking under pressure is not unique to humans, and thus, its neural basis might be conserved across species.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.