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The “Championship Choke” Revisited: The Role of Fear of Acquiring a Negative Identity 1
Author(s) -
Heaton Alan W.,
Sigall Harold
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1989.tb01236.x
Subject(s) - choking , psychology , social psychology , championship , salient , identity (music) , advertising , aesthetics , history , business , anatomy , medicine , philosophy , archaeology
The contribution of fear of failing to paradoxical performance decrements under pressure (choking) before a supportive, home team audience was explored. A further analysis of archival baseball data presented by Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984) was undertaken. Home teams that took the lead, and for whom achieving a positive identity was therefore salient, and home teams that fell behind, and for whom fear of acquiring a negative identity was salient, choked in the decisive seventh game of the World Series. Choking was reflected by both a relative inability of the home team to maintain a lead or overcome a deficit in game 7 and by increases in the rate at which fielding errors were committed by home teams which had taken the lead or fallen behind in game 7. The findings are interpreted in light of recent research on self‐attention and self‐presentation.