Choking under pressure in archery

Abstract

In high pressure situations, individuals may perform well below expectations. This is called “choking under pressure” and we study it in the context of a competitive sports environment. We construct a unique dataset on archery to study whether performance deteriorates at the end of a match, when two players compete in a tiebreak. Our results suggest that pressure plays a key role: overall performance deteriorates in the tiebreak. This effect is even more pronounced in the tiebreak of the most important tournaments, but only for women.