ArticleScientific reports2022
Endogenous cortisol correlates with performance under pressure on a working memory task in capuchin monkeys.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Willingness to wait covaries with endogenous variation in cortisol.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- A neural basis of choking under pressure.Neuron · 2024Article
- Under pressure: the interaction between high-stakes contexts and individual differences in decision-making in humans and non-human species.Animal cognition · 2023Review
- Comparative economics: how studying other primates helps us better understand the evolution of our own economic decision making.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Fitness consequences of chronic exposure to different light pollution wavelengths in nocturnal and diurnal rodents.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Humans often experience striking performance deficits when their outcomes are determined by their own performance, colloquially referred to as "choking under pressure." Physiological stress responses that have been linked to both choking and thriving are well-conserved in primates, but it is unknown whether other primates experience similar effects of pressure. Understanding whether this occurs and, if so, its physiological correlates, will help clarify the evolution and proximate causes of choking in humans. To address this, we trained capuchin monkeys on a computer game that had clearly denoted high- and low-pressure trials, then tested them on trials with the same signals of high pressure, but no difference in task difficulty. Monkeys significantly varied in whether they performed worse or better on high-pressure testing trials and performance improved as monkeys gained experience with performing under pressure. Baseline levels of cortisol were significantly negatively related to performance on high-pressure trials as compared to low-pressure trials. Taken together, this indicates that less experience with pressure may interact with long-term stress to produce choking behavior in early sessions of a task. Our results suggest that performance deficits (or improvements) under pressure are not solely due to human specific factors but are rooted in evolutionarily conserved biological factors.
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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.