Exploring a choking under pressure effect in an escape room setting

Abstract

The present study examined choking under pressure in a new research setting, namely an escape room. In this setting participants were affected by four types of pressure (outcome, time, monitoring and competition). Performance in three condition (pre-, post- and in the escape room) was measured on a Mental Rotation Task (MRT). It was expected that people would perform worse on the MRT in the escape room setting, due to a high amount of pressure. The main analysis did not show a significant effect. An exploratory analysis showed that participants performed particularly low on MRT items that should have been reported as different. They did not perform above chance on these items. After correcting these items, a significant choking under pressure effect was found. The findings of this study support the hypothesis that an escape room setting can be a sufficient setting to identify choking under pressure. The results show profound implications for subsequent research. Future research is necessary to investigate the right degree of difficulty and practice items for the MRT. Furthermore, it is advised to research which kind of pressure in the escape room causes the most choking.