IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-24-00457.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do professional athletes choke when they don't have time to stop and (over) think?

Author

Listed:
  • Agustín Indaco

    (Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar)

  • Ira Teqja

    (Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar)

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 (soccer) players choke when they have an opportunity to score in late-game 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 in late-game situations 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Agustín Indaco & Ira Teqja, 2025. "Do professional athletes choke when they don't have time to stop and (over) think?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 45(1), pages 357-369.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-24-00457
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2025/Volume45/EB-25-V45-I1-P33.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jose Apesteguia & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2011. "Corrigendum: Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1636-1636, June.
    2. Jose Apesteguia & Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2010. "Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2548-2564, December.
    3. Genakos, Christos & Pagliero, Mario & Garbi, Eleni, 2015. "When pressure sinks performance: Evidence from diving competitions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 5-8.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xu, Minbo & Wang, Oliver, 2023. "Psychological pressure and performance in competitive environments: The first-hole effect in youth golf," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    2. Graff, Frederik & Grund, Christian & Harbring, Christine, 2021. "Competing on the Holodeck - The effect of virtual peers and heterogeneity in dynamic tournaments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    3. Bar-Eli, Michael & Krumer, Alex & Morgulev, Elia, 2020. "Ask not what economics can do for sports - Ask what sports can do for economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    4. Krumer, Alex & Lechner, Michael, 2016. "First In First Win: Evidence on Unfairness of Round-Robin Tournaments in Mega-Events," Economics Working Paper Series 1611, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    5. Iqbal, Hamzah & Krumer, Alex, 2017. "Discouragement Effect and Intermediate Prizes in Multi-Stage Contests: Evidence from Tennis’s Davis Cup," Economics Working Paper Series 1719, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    6. Wen‐Jhan Jane, 2022. "Choking or excelling under pressure: Evidence of the causal effect of audience size on performance," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 329-357, January.
    7. González-Díaz, Julio & Palacios-Huerta, Ignacio, 2016. "Cognitive performance in competitive environments: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 40-52.
    8. Iqbal, Hamzah & Krumer, Alex, 2019. "Discouragement effect and intermediate prizes in multi-stage contests: Evidence from Davis Cup," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 364-381.
    9. Jamie Emerson & Brian Hill, 2024. "Interim rank and risk-taking: Evidence from long jump competitions," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 44(1), pages 99-111.
    10. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2018. "Testing the effect of serve order in tennis tiebreak," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 106-115.
    11. Daniel C. Hickman & Craig Kerr & Neil Metz, 2019. "Rank and Performance in Dynamic Tournaments: Evidence From the PGA Tour," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(4), pages 509-534, May.
    12. Krumer, Alex & Lechner, Michael, 2017. "First in first win: Evidence on schedule effects in round-robin tournaments in mega-events," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 412-427.
    13. Cohen-Zada, Danny & Krumer, Alex & Shapir, Offer Moshe, 2017. "Take a Chance on ABBA," IZA Discussion Papers 10878, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Tom P. Vandebroek & Brian T. McCann & Govert Vroom, 2018. "Modeling the Effects of Psychological Pressure on First-Mover Advantage in Competitive Interactions," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 19(5), pages 725-754, June.
    15. Benjamin Balsmeier & Bernd Frick & Michael Hickfang, 2019. "The impact of skilled immigrants on their local teammates’ performance," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 97-103, January.
    16. Michael T. Rauh & Giulio Seccia, 2010. "Agency and Anxiety," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 87-116, March.
      • Michael T. Rauh & Giulio Seccia, 2006. "Agency and Anxiety," Working Papers 2006-02, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    17. Daniel Goller, 2023. "Analysing a built-in advantage in asymmetric darts contests using causal machine learning," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 325(1), pages 649-679, June.
    18. Franziska Braschke & Patrick A. Puhani, 2023. "Population Adjustment to Asymmetric Labour Market Shocks in India: A Comparison to Europe and the United States at Two Different Regional Levels," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 66(1), pages 7-35, March.
    19. Luigi Buzzacchi & Stefano Pedrini, 2014. "Does player specialization predict player actions? Evidence from penalty kicks at FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(10), pages 1067-1080, April.
    20. Csató, László & Boros, Réka & Czakó, Adrienn, 2025. "Igazságtalanul rendezik a svájci rendszerű sakkversenyeket?. Egy empirikus bizonyíték [Are Swiss-system chess tournaments unfair?. Empirical evidence]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 596-607.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-24-00457. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.