[论文解读] Very Highly Skilled Individuals Do Not Choke Under Pressure: Evidence from Professional Darts

Christian Deutscher, Marius Ötting+4 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Sep 20, 2018

Sports Analytics and Performance参考文献 52被引用 7

一句话总结

本研究基于83名顶尖选手的23,192次投掷数据，调查了职业飞镖比赛中压力下的表现。与广泛接受的‘压力下表现失常’现象相反，作者发现高度熟练的个体在压力下反而表现更佳，表明顶尖技能与经验使他们能在高压力情境中保持最佳专注，而非表现下滑。

ABSTRACT

Understanding and predicting how individuals perform in high-pressure situations is of importance in designing and managing workplaces, but also in other areas of society such as disaster management or professional sports. For simple effort tasks, an increase in the pressure experienced by an individual, e.g. due to incentive schemes in a workplace, will increase the effort put into the task and hence in most cases also the performance. For the more complex and usually harder to capture case of skill tasks, there exists a substantial body of literature that fairly consistently reports a choking phenomenon under pressure. However, we argue that many of the corresponding studies have crucial limitations, such as neglected interaction effects or insufficient numbers of observations to allow within-individual analysis. Here, we investigate performance under pressure in professional darts as a near-ideal setting with no direct interaction between players and a high number of observations per subject. We analyze almost one year of tournament data covering 23,192 dart throws, hence a data set that is very much larger than those used in most previous studies. Contrary to what would be expected given the evidence in favor of a choking phenomenon, we find strong evidence for an overall improved performance under pressure, for nearly all 83 players in the sample. These results could have important consequences for our understanding of how highly skilled individuals deal with high-pressure situations.

研究动机与目标

• 在一项高技能、高重复性的任务中检验‘压力下表现失常’假说，且外部干扰极小。
• 解决先前研究的局限性，包括样本量小、交互效应被忽视，以及努力型任务与技能型任务的混淆。
• 检验极度高超技能的个体在压力下是否表现出表现提升而非下降。
• 确定精英职业中的选拔效应是否倾向于选择在压力下表现更佳的个体。

提出的方法

• 本研究使用大规模实地数据集，包含来自职业飞镖锦标赛的23,192次独立投掷数据。
• 应用固定效应回归模型分析表现结果（1次投掷完成、2次投掷完成、3次投掷完成），同时控制投掷序号、奖金金额、对手剩余得分及比赛状态。
• 通过比赛情境定义压力：当一名选手距离赢得或输掉一局仅差一局时，或对手接近完成时。
• 分析中包含选手特定的随机效应，以评估个体在压力下的反应差异。
• 纳入经验、投掷序号和奖金金额等协变量，以控制混杂因素。
• 数据涵盖近一年的职业比赛，支持可靠的个体内部比较。

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 正如文献普遍假设的那样，职业飞镖选手是否在压力下表现失常？
• RQ2 当压力增加时，技能型任务的表现如何变化，特别是在最顶尖的选手中？
• RQ3 选拔效应在多大程度上塑造了精英选手中观察到的表现模式？
• RQ4 如理论所预测的那样，压力对表现的影响在努力型任务与技能型任务之间是否相互独立？
• RQ5 是否可以在高重复性、标准化的技能任务中可靠地测量个体在压力下的反应差异？

主要发现

• 样本中近83名职业飞镖选手在压力下均表现出表现提升，与‘压力下表现失常’假说相矛盾。
• 在高压情境下，1次投掷完成的几率提高了0.294（p < 0.01），表明在压力下表现更强。
• 对于2次投掷完成，压力的系数为0.681（p < 0.01），表明对表现有显著正向影响。
• 在3次投掷完成的模型中，当对手接近完成时，几率增加了0.444（p < 0.01），表明在压力下精度提升。
• 选手特定的固定效应显示，仅有1名选手表现出负向压力效应，而绝大多数选手的表现均有所提升。
• 结果表明，精英选手可能进入一种‘竞赛状态’，从而增强专注力与表现，而非进入一种‘威胁状态’导致表现受损。