Sian Beilock || How Not to Choke Under Pressure

It's great to have Seon Bylock on the podcast. Sion began her tenure as Barnard College President in July twenty seventeen after spending twelve years at the University of Chicago, where she served on the faculty as the Stella M. Raley Professor of Psychology, Executive Vice Provost, and an officer of the University. Her work as a cognitive scientist revolves around performance anxiety and reveals simple psychological strategies that can be used to ensure success in everything from test taking

in public speaking to athletics and job interviews. In twenty ten, she wrote the critically acclaimed book Choke, and in twenty fifteen she wrote How the Body Knows Its Mind. In twenty seventeen, she won the troll And Award from the National Academy of Sciences, and her recent TED talk has been viewed more than two million times. Sion, so great to finally chat with you today. Oh, it's great to be here. So I thought we'd start talking a little

about your very interesting career journey. Serious academic. You're still a serious academic, but I'm still serious, but kind of like serious academic exclusively. You know, to college president, this is incredible, you know this journey. Can can you talk about how that transformation happened. It's interesting because it wasn't planned in any way, shape or form, and it really is an assistant professor, even as sociate professor at the University of Chicago, I so focused on my lab in

my department. I'm not even trying I could have said what division my department was in at the college. But it was shortly after I got tenure that I was on them. I got voted onto our faculty Senate, and

then a smaller group of individuals. It was twelve people who had lunch with the president and provost every two weeks, twelve faculty at Chicago and really advised them and talked about the university, and it was the first time that I really realized there was this whole institution out there, and that it wasn't just a research or a faculty member or a lab. It was all of those things

operating within an institution. And I kind of fell in love with this idea that you could affect change at a higher level on that you could help raise the voices of so many smart, interesting people inside. And that's when I became interested in an administration, and from there I stepped into a vice provost role at Chicago, and then executive vice provost, and then the presidency at Barne.

It does seem like even in your early research, you really always had this interest in practical application in the real world. Yeah. I mean, and I always thought it was never either or that you could publish in serious academic journals and also ask questions about aspects of performance that people cared about. But I will say that I

think it's becoming more and more acceptable in academia. But when I went up from tenure, I actually didn't put on my dossier that I had a book contract, and my chair at the time came back to me and said, I want some way to talk about all of this sort of public speaking you've done and the practical applications of your work. And I said, well, actually, I have this book contract to write popular audience book for Simon and Schuster, and he was like, well, of course we

have to talk about this. This is really important. And I really credit a senior colleague for sort of normalizing it for me, because I think that was a special thing to happen at Chicago, and I'm not sure that would have happened everywhere. Grad school, I remember telling people I want to write a book someday. They were like, yeah, you're going to have the wait forty years to get tenure, and then you get tenure plus and then you get whatever. I think it does a disservice to the field to

put this druxtaposition in. I mean, if we're not writing about the work that's happening in science, someone else is going to. And it doesn't mean that everyone has to do it or but you know the work that you do, Scott and so many other sort of people. That crossover I think is so important. I mean, we have the tools and the knowledge to interpret what's happening in science, and frankly, I think it's some of our responsibility to do so. Yeah, I've always thought that was the case,

you know, the part of our responsibility. And it surprised me that academics didn't. I mean, my mentor and undergraduate Herb Simon, very straight laced, serious, rigorous, you know, decision making, you know what I mean? That seems that seem straightly for some reason, doesn't it's decision making, you know, information processing. You know. He told me gave me advice when he said, you know, a good scientist really sticks to the science, you know, really just does pure science leave the rest

to someone else. And I was just like, inside, yeah, I was this little, like, you know, nineteen year old, but I was like, I'm not sure about that. Inside. I didn't challenge him, but he isn't amazing. I mean, he won the Nobel Prize, so there is something to be that. I didn't win the Nobel Prize yet, so maybe he did have a point. Yeah. I think that it exemplifies that there's different ways to be a good scientist, is what I would say. So, your your first book

was about choking under pressure. Yeah, is there a personal reason why you got interest in that topic at all? Did you did you have like anxiety in school as a kid or something like that that sort of Yeah, I always talk this is another sort of coming back to what you are and aren't supposed to do as a scientist. I always talk about the fact that there's a lot of mesearch in this, it's not just research.

I think I also heard that as a scientist, like you're supposed to separate yourself from the work that you're doing, and that's the only way to be objective. But I think it's okay for you to have interest in the kind of work that you're doing as a scientist, and I think it provides a passion that can propel people. And so I was as an undergraduate, I was a cognitive science major at UC San Diego, which I was

just absolutely in love with the whole program. And I remember we read so many interesting articles and books about people operating at high levels, like how learning occurs, you know, we read stuff by Herb Simon and others about what it takes to be a really great performer, what happens in the brain as you learn and acquire skills, And there just wasn't that much that I was reading about what happens when you fail, right, and especially when you are at a high skill level. And I was an

athlete growing up. I played soccer at a pretty high level, and I always was wondered why sometimes I didn't perform as well as I could in those situations where there was a lot on the line. And it seemed counterintuitive to me because I wanted to perform really well. And so there was a really element for me of trying to understand what happened in high pressure situations and whether or not there were tools that we all could use to perform better. I was wondering, is there a continuum

like is flow in the opposite end of choking? Can you be in flow and still choke? You know what I mean? I mean, I think it depends on how like what you define as flow. I think in some sense you could talk about a continuum if you define flow as performing at an optimal level, like with ease, right, and so choking could be on the other end of that.

You know. One thing I think is really interesting is that when people talk about flow, they talk about this characteristic of being like not over attentive or not focusing on the details of what you're doing, and sometimes not even having a memory for what you've done. And you know, we in my work and others, we've shown that when one of the reasons people can choke under pressure is they actually pay too much attention to aspects of their their skills that should just be on autopilot. So I

think there are some ways to put it on and continue. Yeah, because whenever I think of the opposite of choking, I just keep thinking of like Michael Jordan, I keep think of like, you know, when they're on the court and they're like they have these these deadly instincts, you know, where they're just like they're so in the zone and so, but they still missshots. And something that's interesting to me

is that is some of this framing as well. Could some of the things we do we say, oh, I totally choked in that situation, whereas someone else may have the same exact situation and be like, oh, well, you know just went off. The ball just went off like a couple inches to the right. You know, next time, I know what I'm going to do, and they don't even think about it in like that way. You know what I mean? Is there individual differences and just like

even framing of the situation. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really interesting. And there is this individual difference in what we even consider pressure situations. Right, So if I have to give a talk, and my mom likes to sometimes come to my talks wherever I am, and she makes me so nervous, right, but my mom's probably not going to make you nervous. Even how you interpret the situation can be different, and what one person finds to

be a pressure situation, another person might not. And I think what you're talking about framing is also how we react to the situation. I mean, we all have performance ups and downs. I wouldn't call that choking. When I talk about choking, I'm talking about a situation where you feel pressure to perform at a high level, you want to perform at a high level, and then you perform

worse than expected given your skill level. I think framing it as you know, this is what happened poorly, whether it's luck or technique, and here's what I'm going to do differently next time, we actually know is one way to prevent choking. Moving forward, thinking about how you're going to control the situation next time, or how you're going to succeed, rather than dwelling on the failure because it's

just fascinating me. Like, I watched some of these high level sports performers and they miss a lot of shots. I mean, they miss a lot of they keep you know, but but they're just they just keep going back and then over the long run, they tend to have more, you know, they think in the terms of the bigger picture,

in terms of Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's actually really important, and it's not the more you can take sort of your identity and your feelings of success out of one individual instance, you know, the more you might be buffered from feeling nervous about that instance. And I will say that, you know, you mentioned Michael Jordan, who was an amazing basketball player, but I think he's a really great example of how being successful in one thing

doesn't mean you're inoculated from choking in others. I mean, he had a real hard time hitting a baseball, right, So I think that's important to keep in mind. Okay, So I was wondering how this relates to your research on women's career success. Yeah. I mean one of the reasons I'm so interested, so excited to be at Barnard, which is I'm now my fourth year, which is like unbelievable.

I have been really interested in situations where people might be worried about their ability to perform because of historically health stereotypes, or because they're worried about being evaluated based on who they are. You know. I've had an interest in math and science and especially for women and girls.

And some of my research has looked very early showing that young girls can pick up on anxiety about their ability to perform in math and science based on their teachers and their parents, and that that carries out into success even later in life. So I think, you know, there's a very clear relationship for me parents sort of

feedback and responses to so what do you speak? Examples? Yeah, So we've shown, for example that when if you look across, for example, college majors, do you know what the college major with the most math anxiety is? Do you have a guess? It's not math? It's not math, not a math major. No, it's not. Okay, let me guess. Let me guess. So it's like a major where they have the math component to it? Is that right? No? Or any if you survey college majors, Okay, like about how

anxious they are. Oh okay, so what's the major? Okay, I guess I'm going to be just like stereotype and I'll just go for like music. Yeah, well, it turns out it's education, oh, which literally women uh dominated? Right? Yeah? Yeah, And so we've actually shown that like over ninety percent of first and second grade teachers, for example, in the US are women, and they have very high levels of

math anxiety. And we've shown that when students are in classes with teachers who are high in math anxiety, by the end of the school year, they learn less math and there are also more are likely to be anxious about their own ability. That's really interesting. I probably should have thought that through. I just I literally just choke on your on your the question that you asked me, because why would someone who's a math major have math anxiety?

That didn't make any sense. I didn't really think that through. See, I was like nervous, just to show we all know, Yeah, I literally in so many situations, I just colossally choked on your question. Okay, but yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Now I think this through, And yeah, education doesn't have high math requirements, right, I don't even

think statistics. It's interesting when our first article came out, I got some emails from math professors at different universities saying that there'd been a lot of pressure from their administrators to actually reduce the math requirements for education majors because it would they thought that would help, and they were probably right attract undergrads to the institution, right if you were looking for an education major with less math.

And so it's a really interesting I thought that was quite interesting in that how you know policy or thinking about an entity at such a high level, like how many undergrads you can enroll at a university. This has implications for who we're training in terms of who's teaching for sure, and a lot of this translates into representation in the STEM fields, right, and you know, ultimately educators are not trying to be represented in the STEM fields.

Is it necessarily a bad thing that the educators are afraid of math? Like maybe math majors are afraid of education, you know, like, if we think about this, zoom out for a second, is that necessarily a bad thing? Well? I do think that if we have young or if we have teachers who are focused mostly on elementary school who are worried about math. What we're doing is we are potentially hurting a population of students who would go on and succeed in those areas. I mean, remember, an

elementary school tature is not specializing. And actually what you find is in a lot of more wealthy schools they often have math specialists. Right, So now we start getting into achievement gaps where people in wealthier school districts have access students to additional math teaching or help, where they're getting different inputs, and I think they're I think it's

it's a scary. It's a serious and scary problem because you could imagine a student, and especially female students yere over a year, who are getting compounding input about whether you know, they are a math person or not, which we know is not a thing, and also whether or not they can succeed in it. And I think, you know, it's bad for society if our goal is to put as many people as possible at the table to succeed in areas that they have potential in. It seems like

the Mathew effects concept is relevant here. You know that that rich get rich, your poor get poor idea A little small, little changes and really compound. If you're if you're just slightly taller and you get picked for the basketball team when you're young, you get picked, you're more likely to get picked for the next one, more likely to get and they just compounds. And then we say you're so talented, you know ten years later you know, to the person. Yeah, so yeah, it seems like these things,

these things certainly kind of compound. And I've written articles as well and why is there such underrepresentation of men in the caring professions, you know, trying to understand. There's some actually really cool research trying to examine that as well, and just try to understand all those different ways that we have these stereotypes in our society that are limiting the full potential of all humans. And I really like

the work you're doing and I think it's really important. Thanks. Yeah, So what advice do you have for listeners then, who are early in their careers? Maybe if it's women listeners particularly interested in this conversation, they don't feel particularly confident about certain abilities, but they clearly have the abilities. You know, what do you say? I mean? First of all, I would say that something that I think this is particularly true for women and there's research that shows this is

that it's okay to feel uncomfortable in the situation. Right, So we know that women are less likely to apply for a job if they don't have all the criteria compared to men, or if they get to be in a class or less likely to predict they can go on to the next level of the class relative to men. And I think something we talk a lot about at Barnard is sort of it's being uncomfortable and taking that extra step and even being okay not succeeding right or

not succeeding the first time around. And so I would say, you know that it's it's really important to try and push yourself into those situations where you don't have it already all figured out, and where you might not have one hundred percent confidence in your abilities. The goal is to get some help and to ask questions and ask around.

And I think that's also a place where there sometimes can be gender differences and sort of the ability to ask for help in certain situations or the ability to think you have to do it all on your own. I suffered from terrible test anxiety as a kid. I wish I could have asked you this next question when

I was, you know, in senior in high school. But you know, what's a way that you can prepare yourself mentally for a high stake situation, whether it's a big presentation, job, interview, athletic event, major test, or interviewing a college president on a podcast. I mean, I the biggest technique, I think the most important one is to practice under the kinds

of conditions you're going to perform under. So I would say, like, you know, all your times interviewing really important people more important than me, has gotten you ready for this, And I think it's something that is true in so many different areas, Like you know, what's the biggest predictor of how well you do on standardized tests? One of them is how many times you've taken the test before right

or tests like it. And in athletics, you know, we often practice free throws or penalty kicks when no one's watching, but that's not how you take them. So the goal is to create situations as close as possible that mimic what's going to happen in the real do or die. And it doesn't mean you have to practice in front of a crowd. But if you're going to give a talk or a presentation in class. Are you are you

practicing in front of other people? Are you getting used to those feelings of you know, dread that you might feel even if no one's watching. Can you videotape yourself? How do you mimic the kinds of conditions you're going to feel in the real moment. That's really good advice. So let's just talk about Barnard a little bit. Why do you think Barnard College is unique in the academic even compared to like Colombia. I mean, I think Barnard is singular. There's no place like it in the country

or the world. It's an institution focused on empowering young women, and it does this in this small, tight knit environment, but with the larger resources of this major university, so you have, I think the best of both worlds. And I think, really what makes it so special or the faculty.

You know, our faculty, as you know, are all tenured at Barnard and Columbia, but they're so devoted to working with students and being part of the research and we've ADJUNCTO yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think it's just it makes for this really compelling atmosphere, and you combine that with a focus, a real explicit focus on bringing voices that are sometimes marginalized to the table, and I think it it does. It sets students up to have a voice. And I'm sure you've seen that big time

in terms of the students. I mean, they come out really special. I'm a little biased. I have to say I'm biased, but I really do believe. No, I think they're they're amazing. I really do. I am. You know, A big part of the course I taught, they're the science of living well is self actualization and you know, helping any student whatever they want to do in their lives, to really help them like focus on their values and

qualify their values, clarify their vision. Some of these students' visions are a lot I would say a lot of the students' visions are remarkable. You know, how they want to like completely change the world, you know, for the better. Yes, it's heartwarming. Yeah, I mean I think our students really give me hope, and we do. We talk about that a lot, how we're setting Barnard women up to go out and change the world. And there's lots of examples

how our graduates have done that. Yeah, And I can't think of a more important thing to be doing right now. So are you do you teach a freshman seminar? I don't. I haven't yet. What I do is I for our first years under normal years during orientation, we have a program called Barnard Reads where many faculty do a seminar. It's a one time seminar with students. So I usually have about one hundred students and we read one of my papers actually written with a graduate student who went

to Barnard, a former graduate student. And but I haven't, you know, my first several years, I've just been so busy. But I give guest lectures and do other things, and I feel like I get some chances to interact with the students. Then, So if you if you did teach a full freshman seminar, what what would like your ultimate topic be? Yeah, I mean that's the court. I think it would maybe not so surprisingly. You know, the psychology of human performance, and I think it's something that you know,

we're all inherently interested in. I mean, we all have times where we don't perform up to our potential, and we don't we spend a lot of time talking about you know, how you learn and what tools you need to be successful, but we don't spend as much time talking about the mental aspects of this. You know, what are the tips and tools in the moment you can use to pull off your best performance and what do

you do if you've failed? And and that's really why I wrote Choke, you know, to give people sort of a toolbox of techniques that are research based that can drive and help our best performance. Would you ever a guest lecture in my class on this, Yes, I would love to. You haven't asked me yet. I can't believe it. I'm just like realizing that right now, Like I try to, like, I don't want to bother you, but I'm just like thinking i'd be happy. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just thinking, like, wow,

Like the students were really amazingly benefit from that. Actually have gone in a couple of times, for in Dina Meyer's OKEM class, and I give them study tips because you know, organic chemistry, I think many of us experience was a really difficult class. One of the things that I guess you touched on earlier is you know, oftentimes people walk out of a class or a test and

they're like oh my god, I choked. And it could very well be they choked, or it could be that they actually didn't know the material and didn't know they didn't know, and like our ability to understand what we know, which we often talk about as metacognition, is not always

great and not always correlated with accuracy. So part of what I talked about with the students were taking practice tests, getting in study groups, and you know, figuring out ways to assess what you know before you have to perform. That's I mean, you're really helpful advice for me as well, So thank you. This is really great. So are you seeing a increase in political activism on the campus right now?

I mean it was already pretty high, a lot of people, a lot of activists on campus, but are you seeing an increase in this cultural moment we're having with a reckoning of race tensions in America. I mean, there's no question that I think college campuses are really important place to have these conversations, and I think, as you know, we're one of the only institutions that really made a

intentional focus on the curriculum around these issues. So for all first years this year are taking a new course called Big Problems making sense of twenty twenty, where we have activists and others in giving lectures on what they're doing in this environment, and students are in groups talking about it. And we also have a new co curricular program called Third Space where students are getting to learn from activists and practitioners in their own hometowns about what

they're doing to affect change. And I think where colleges and universities can help and support students into funneling their interest and their distress into two ways to affect change is where we can be really important, where we can have a real important impact. Do you see as part of that curriculum do you see a discussion at all how much one should bring in science, you know, into the work to make sure their activism is grounded on

a very firm basis of reality. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I hope those discussions are going on. I think, you know, there's a lot of discussion about how we interpret the news media and how the news media interprets the data, and how important it is for students to be good consumers of that information. Barnard is one of the few schools where everyone has a statistics requirement or in acquirement where they have to take a class where they have

to think empirically. And I think that's so important. I mean, just through the whole COVID pandemic and through the racial unrest that we've seen recently. I'm just always so amazed how easy it is to present data that I don't think as a reader reflects actuality, right, I mean, you know, with numbers of COVID cases, when you know, you talk about things going up five hundred percent, it matters what

the baseline is. Yeah, I completely agree, And it just seems like it's such as it's good kids met for aspiring activists also learn about statistics, you know, for instance, or to learn about so they can be good consumers, like you said, of information and make sure they're activisms on a on a solid basis. So yeah, I think that the two aren't incompatible at all. I mean, and I talk, you know, I often when I talk about Parnard, I talk about getting you know, an education across the

arts and sciences. There's not this either or I think the liberal arts is a term from research. We know that people don't even understand what it means. And I think the you know, an education across the arts and sciences is what we're providing our students, you know, we're teaching. I talk a lot about how we're teaching them how to think, not what to think, you know. I think it's so important to have different political views represented on

campus and in the classroom. And I think students should feel uncomfortable in challenging their own views, especially in the classroom. But ultimately, you know, make it known that it's a safe space to challenge the views, you know, like you can, you can do so and not be condemned if people disagree with you. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I it's interest because I feel like the word safe space, I don't. It's like again, to some people, it's yeah, and it doesn't.

I don't. It doesn't mean the same thing to everyone, right, And I do think there are spaces, and certainly spaces on college campuses, where people should feel free to get to people get together with people who have the same lived experiences, who look like them, who believe what they believe. I mean, that's an important aspect of a living right to be around people that you feel really unguarded with.

But I don't actually see that being what should happen in the classroom, and I think you know there should you should be challenge of course, you should be challenged in a way where you're free to give your point of view and you don't feel condemned for it. But I think it's okay to feel uncomfortable in lots of situations, and it's not something we always like, but it leads to better thinking and better ideas. I agree with that

very much. So let's just briefly just touch on how the body knows its mind or your more recent book, The Surprise, using power the physical environment to influence how you think that you love these titles, Yeah, the Shocking Truth. It's like, let's talk about body language. That's very very interesting to me. How can gestures help us learn? No, I think you know my whole the whole tent you like.

Sort of premise of that book was that our thinking and our ability to function in the environment isn't just something that happens in our head. Our environment matters. I think we all experience this in different ways, especially when we've been cooped up, Like being able to look out in nature or be outside or take a break can affect our well being and our mental health, and it can affect how we think. And just as our environment matters,

so does our body. And so this idea that we can use our fingers and our body to index to help hold information. You know, people don't talk about a lot, but it's actually true. Like this idea that kids counting on their fingers, that's an important way to offload mental demands, right, cognitive effort, and at some point you want to get away from that. But this idea that you start on

your fingers is totally fine. Or you know, for me, the way I remember things is to have lots of little piles in my office that the things I'm working on. I definitely think that's an external memory aid that I use to remind myself of what is happening. And it's powerful to use the body in this way. Yeah, and there's the whole sense of movement right now. Do give any advice for people who are just so sedentary? Yeah, I mean it's advice that I need to take myself.

But I think we have to really force ourselves to get up and away from our screens. You know, all those little places where we would move to go down to the lunch room or to walk to work or wherever like, if those are not available to us, we have to really do things to keep it up because it's so easy to just not leave your house or to not get up and move around. And we know that an active body is so important for physical health

and mental health and in green scenery. Yeah, and there's some great work by a colleague of a former colleague of mine at the University of Chicago that really shows that being out in nature can change how we think and our ability to attend and even looking out in nature. And I've heard from so many people during the pandemic that they're really cognizant of being able to go outside and when they can and how much they appreciate it, and those little things matter. And then how can you

use the Alexander technique to eliminate physical tension? Yeah? I think just this idea that we have to really be aware of our body, how we're moving it, how we sit, stretching is so important. Anything that helps us really sort of release the tension that we have everywhere can be so important for success. Do you want to like go into like a couple of minute like an exercise for our listeners. I don't want to do that. I know you have a link here at Alexander Technique dot com.

We can just direct them to that website. Yeah, I think it's I think it's like anything from body centered meditation to you know, getting out and moving like. I think these are all things that as we maybe have a little more time on our hands, maybe some of us don't, but they're really important to look into. You even suggest taking an acting class, yeah, as a way to get used to being uncomfortable, right, getting used to embodying different people. I think all of these things can

be really great for reducing stress. I mean, just like you read a good book or watch a TV show to sort of of take that step and lose yourself, Having a class like that, you know, can help you step away. Well, do you have any any final tips or anything you want to say that I didn't, I will.

I will just say that you know, how we move and how we think about our situations really matter, and so we often tend to just discard our mental states, right, And but there's a lot of psychological research out there showing how important it is that we attend to them as well, and there are things that we can do to feel better even in this crazy and often horrible time where we don't feel like we have control over anything.

We can control some of what we're doing, whether we step outside, get up and move, How we think about the future as something that we can conquer or something that's filled with dread, like our mindset really matters. Absolutely well, Thank you so much. A lot of people are going to really find this episode helpful for them, and I really appreciate you coming on the Psychology Podcast. Oh well, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode

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