Customer Reviews

Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To

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There are many psychology books for general audiences out there these days, including books about why some people perform so well and others so poorly under stress. In reality, many of these books have no substance. Authors such as Malcom Gladwell and his clones entertain readers with stories about people while giving the illusion that they are discussing scientific research. This book is different. This book is the real deal. This book gives you the real science behind human performance, and you will find it more accessible and entertaining than all the Gladwell books combined. The truth is that when smart psychology professors such as Daniel Gilbert (Stumbling on Happiness) and Sian Beilock (Choke) write books about their subject, they make look all the other authors like amateurs, which is what they are. Don't be fooled. If you want to hear stories about people written by reporters, read People magazine. If you want to find out how the human mind works, read books like Choke.

Beilock takes you through research in academics, athletics and the business world detailing how people succeed and why they "choke under pressure." She writes that there are two main reasons why choking occurs. In short, people choke under pressure because their brain (and more precisely, a brain area called the prefrontal cortex) stops working the way it should. The prefrontal cortex and the working-memory housed there are needed for taking tests and doing math problems and, under pressure, there is not enough umph to go around. Under pressure, people also try and control what they are doing and - if they are doing an activity like taking a free-throw or trying to hit a simple putt - this control can backfire and actually disrupt their performance. Because people choke for different reasons in different situations, it's important to understand why it happens to figure out how to prevent it from occurring. This book gives you all the explanations. Beilock also suggests techniques for achieving top performance based on the science, so you actually learn something useful about how you can succeed in the activities you care about.

This is a very well researched and written look at the Neurological Basis of performance.

I had one very frustrating issue with it though. Nowhere in the promotional material for this book is there any indication that it will be about scientific research that disproves the biological explanation for the differences between Men and Women in the Math and Science fields. Yet, for some reason, a full quarter, verging on a third of text is devoted to this topic.

It's a strange experience to read this. The author establishes a thread about the neurological basis of choking, and then goes on a nearly 100 page tangent. While this is certainly an interesting, significant, and necessary topic, it doesn't fit in well with the rest of the book.

It seems as if it would have worked better on its own.

Other than this issue, the book is a great read.

I found this book to be both intellectually impressive and thoroughly enjoyable. The topic is one that should matter to everyone: how we perform -- or sometimes fail to perform -- under pressure. Whether your interest is in improving your golf game, understanding why your very bright and talented kid just bombed the SATs, or how to do a presentation at work, this book provides tremendous insight into the science of how people perform under pressure. Most important, the author uses that scientific insight as a basis for designing practical ways to improve your performance in pressured situations. The author has a gift: the ability to present scientific explanations of how our brains function under stress in a style that is comprehensible to a lay person. (I have not taken a science class since junior year of high school, so that I particularly appreciate her style.) The tone is just right. The author finds a way to explain and simplify without condescending in any way. Best of all, the author offers a great reward to those who read her book: with the understanding of how people function under stress comes a very practical guide to ways we can use that understanding to improve our performance levels in the vast, diverse realm of activities that are the stuff of everyday life. This book represents a practical application psychology at its very best, more powerful and more useful than any "sef-help" book you will ever read.

Ever feel betrayed by your brain?

It's the day of the big test, and even though you've aced every practice test, you can't even get through the first few problems on the actual test. Or, you've mastered your speech, and could practically recite it in your sleep, and then on the day of your performance, you freeze. Or, you've been flawlessly making every putt on the greens during practice, but when the pressure's on during the game, you can't putt to save your life.

We're all too familiar with the ways the brain can choke. Fortunately, Sian's book _Choke_ provides us with insight into why our brains can get derailed, and also offers techniques for getting things back on track. In essence, there are two ways the brain can choke. The first happens when worries and anxieties interfere with the brain's horsepower needed for complex-thinking and reasoning tasks. The second happens when we over-focus too much on a performance, disrupting the natural flow of what normally happens outside of our conscious awareness. _Choke_ addressees both types of brain bonks, and shows what we can do about each.

The book is packed with plenty of food for thought to help nourish the brain and prevent choking. To whet your cognitive appetite, here's just a sample:

The curse of expertise:

*As we get better at performing a skill, our conscious memory for how we do it gets worse and worse. (p. 16)

Training success:

*Practice can actually change the physical wiring of the brain to support exceptional performance. (p. 43)

*Athletes' tendency to overthink their performance is one big predictor of whether they will choke in important games or matches. (p. 60)

Less can be more--Why flexing your prefrontal cortex is not always beneficial:

*Adults are better at acquiring a new language--that is, adults look more like kids with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes--when they are distracted and not concentrating too hard on what they are learning. (p. 77)

*Having a golfer count backwards by threes, or even having a golfer sing a song to himself, uses up working-memory that might otherwise fuel overthinking or a flubbed performance. (p. 78)

Brain differences between the sexes--A self-fulfilling prophecy?:

*Just being stereotyped negatively is enough to drive down performance. (p. 103)

*Stereotype threat is most dramatic for those girls who are the most skilled and most interested in excelling at what they are being tested on. (p. 103)

Bombing the test--Why we choke under pressure in the classroom:

*Practicing under the types of pressures you will face on the big testing day is one of the best ways to prevent choking. (p. 147)

The choking cure:

*Writing about your worries before a test or presentation prevents choking. (p. 159)

*Putting your feelings into words changes how the brain deals with stressful information. (p. 161)

Choking under pressure--From the green to the stage:

*Heightened attention to detail can actually mess you up. (p. 190)

*Paralysis by analysis occurs when you attend too much to activities that normally operate outside of conscious awareness. (p. 192)

Fixing the cracks in sport and other fields--Anti-choking techniques:

*Training in stressful situations minimizes the possibility of the choke as you gradually become accustomed to the pressure. (p. 213)

*Focusing on what to do (a strategy focus) rather than how to do it (a technique focus) can help prevent cracking under stress. (p. 222)

So, whether you want a test score that reflects your true abilities, you want to be able to speak eloquently (or at least flub-lessly) in front of an audience, you want to be able to make that putt when it really counts, or you just want to figure out how to get your brain on your side, getting your hands on a copy of _Choke_ should be a no-brainer.

This book provides some clues about why pressure causes some people to perform less well than they otherwise would, and gives simple (but not always easy) ways to reduce that effect. There's a good deal of overlap between this book's advice and other self-improvement advice. The book modestly enhances how I think about the techniques and how motivated I am to use them.

The main surprise about the causes is that people with large working memories are more likely to choke because they're more likely to over-analyze a problem, presumably because they're better at analyzing problems. They're also less creative. There are also interesting comments about the role of small working memories in ADHD.

The book includes some interesting comments on how SAT tests provide misleading evidence of sexual differences in ability, and how social influences can affect sexual differences in ability (for example, having a more feminine name makes a girl less likely to learn math).

The book's style is unusually pleasant.

Sian Beilock, the author of "Choke," is on the faculty of the University of Chicago, a pretty impressive credential. She has ostensibly written a book that will help the reader understand why pressure situations often produce sub-par performances, as we have all witnessed from star athletes on television, and most likely experienced ourselves in other situations, such as academic testing or public speaking.

As a performing musician who, after many years, still would like to improve his consistency and quality of performance, I started this book expecting specific advice about how to deal with choking, i.e. how to counteract the tendency toward freaking out and not doing one's best when it most counts. Beilock does make a useful distinction early on between so-called "working memory," which seems to be conscious intellectual thought and analysis, and "thinking outside the box," which seems to be what most of us might call instinct or gut reaction. The upshot of her thesis boils down to this: under pressure people who rely heavily on working memory get into trouble because too much conscious thought can actually inhibit and disrupt performance rather than enhance it. While certainly true this is not exactly a new idea, and rather than develop it Beilock goes off for much of the book on tangents about high-stakes academic testing and self-reinforcing stereotypes, material that is certainly provocative and important but that seems less than central to the main topic. There is some sound advice about preparing by putting oneself in pressure situations in advance of the "main event," and of dealing with performance anxiety by writing about it and facing it head-on rather than denying or ignoring it. I also like the little checklists that summarize the main points of several chapters. Still, with regard to minimizing the chances of "choking" and improving one's overall performance in pressure situations, other books have covered the main topic as well or better, especially as applied to specific areas of endeavor such as musical or athletic performance.

I think this book was a little bit lighter on the topic than I had hoped or expected. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading this and found some very interesting insights into the science and psychology of performance. The book definitely raises some noteworthy questions about how our cultural environment influences individuals' achievement on the all-too-important standardized tests. As an avid golfer and competitive sportsman, I also enjoyed the fact that she provided some real-world examples about various types of chokes, and tips on how to "fool" your brain into working for you, and not against. All things said, it was a good read.

So much anecdotal evidence, so many pages wasted. This is someone who took their lecture notes and pumped in banality and ends up choking on her book. Doing something mentally hard- take a break. Taking a big exam- take practice tests under real conditions. Playing sports- don't think about it- do it. There, I just gave you the meat of the book and saved you some money.

This engaging book not only answers the question, "What makes us choke?" it prescribes proven methods for improving performance under pressure. This is not one of those Rah!Rah! feel good books from the popular press. Dr. Beilock supports her recommendations with a wealth of scientific research including her own. There are numerous examples of choking under pressure such as Greg Norman's famous meltdown in the fourth round of the 1996 Masters, and even very current events like tennis player Serena Williams' blowup that led to her loss in last year's US Open. The book is not limited to crashing and burning in sports. Choking on tests, in interviews, during speeches, and on the stage are also discussed at length.

Though she is an academic, Beilock writes in an acessible first-person style that makes this book a great read. Be prepared to get a double dose of material discussing myths and biases with respect to performance variability by race and in particular gender. It's all good, and I found it fascinating. However, it didn't always appear to be on point and relevant to the topic of choking. Buy this book to cure your yips on the golf course, to prepare for an important business presentation, or just to get an understanding of how to improve your perfromance under pressure.

A fair amount of the book is devoted to how any why people live down to the stereotypes of their group, especially in the context of women's performance on standardized tests and other academic measures. There are also discussions of choking in sports, and how it differs than blanking out on a question during, say, a business presentation. Most of it is easy to understand and pretty entertaining. That style however, does not lend itself to profoundity. It has the feel of a Rudyard Kipling just-so story.

In addition, I just found myself thinking that this could have easily been a book on gender equity, that later became a book on choking because it would sell better.