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February 23, 2007
Accomplished people more likely to fail under stress
Are you a highly motivated, highly intelligent, highly accomplished person who... despite all of that... totally screws up at EXACTLY the wrong moment? Well, it turns out there's a reason for that. According to research out of the University of Chicago, when faced with a problem highly accomplished people rely on their memories of past experiences more than less accomplished folks. That makes sense... folks who have a lot of past success probably have more memories of having successfully solved past problems. But here's the rub -- in times of great stress the part of the brain that grabs past memories and uses those experiences as a springboard to solving current problems doesn't work all that well...the feeling of stress can kind of overwhelm the memory recall process. As a result the mechanism that serves you so well most of the time craps out just when you're counting on it the most. Meanwhile, less accomplished people more often use other problem solving techniques, ones that work just as well in times of stress.
Ya gotta love the irony.
There's a write-up of the study on Eureka Alert.
(Photo: Nick Dimmock/flickr.com)
Posted by Chris Spurgeon at February 23, 2007 11:14 AM
Comments
This is depressing, Chris. What I wonder are the skills that "less accomplished people" rely on when they're stressed. Instinct? If so, have "highly accomplished people" lost theirs?
Jenny
Posted by: Jenny Attiyeh at March 6, 2007 05:21 PM
Man, that totally explains why every iconic hero HAS to have a sidekick!
Posted by: rich at March 10, 2007 07:27 AM
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