Anatomy

Business

Archaeology

Sprint

Front line

History

Advertising

Software engineering

Engineering

Political science

Management

Psychology

Economics

Infantry

Front (military)

Front crawl

Choking

CONTEST

Computer science

Task (project management)

Applied psychology

Target audience

Medicine

Social psychology

Mechanical engineering

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Performing in front of a supportive audience increases motivation. However, it also creates psychological pressure, which may impair performance, especially in precision tasks. In this paper, we exploit a unique setting in which professionals compete in a real-life contest with large monetary rewards in order to assess how they perform in front of a supportive audience. Using the task of shooting in the sprint competitions of professional biathlon events over a period of 16 years, we find that for both genders, biathletes from the top quartile of the ability distribution miss significantly more shots when competing in their home country compared to competing abroad. Our results are in line with the hypothesis that high expectations to perform well in front of a friendly audience prompt individuals to choke when performing skill-based tasks.

Choking under pressure in front of a supportive audience: Evidence from professional biathlon