Do Professional Athletes Choke When They Don’t Have Time to Stop and (Over) Think?

Agustín Indaco and Ira Teqja
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Ira Teqja: Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar

No 342, Working Papers from Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE)

Abstract: Previous research suggests that professional athletes choke when performing unopposed high-pressure tasks, such as taking penalty kicks. This article extends the literature by studying whether football players choke when they have an opportunity to score in open-play situations. These situations are markedly different because in such instances players do not have time to stop and (over)think. We suggest that these situations closely resemble high-pressure professions and mirror many of the stressful scenarios we regularly experience. We find that players consistently underperform relative to expectations when their team is down by one goal. However, players perform to expectations when the game is tied. This finding is consistent with players being loss averse.

Keywords: Choking; Pressure; Football (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 M54 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aoz:wpaper:342

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