Science

Why do the smartest students often do poorly on standardized tests?

Why did you tank that interview or miss that golf swing when you should have had it in the bag?

Why do you mess up when it matters the most—and how can you perform your best instead?

It happens to all of us. You’ve prepared for days, weeks, even years for the big day when you will finally show your stuff—in academics, in your career, in sports—but when the big moment arrives, nothing seems to work. You hit the wrong note, drop the ball, get stumped by a simple question. In other words, you choke. It’s not fun to think about, but now there’s good news: This doesn’t have to happen.

Dr. Sian Beilock, an expert on performance and brain science, reveals in Choke the astonishing new science of why we all too often blunder when the stakes are high. What happens in our brain and body when we experience the dreaded performance anxiety? And what are we doing differently when everything magically “clicks” into place and the perfect golf swing, tricky test problem, or high-pressure business pitch becomes easy? In an energetic tour of the latest brain science, with surprising insights on every page, Beilock explains the inescapable links between body and mind; reveals the surprising similarities among the ways performers, students, athletes, and business people choke; and shows how to succeed brilliantly when it matters most.

In lively prose and accessibly rendered science, Beilock examines how attention and working memory guide human performance, how experience and practice and brain development interact to create our abilities, and how stress affects all these factors. She sheds new light on counterintuitive realities, like why the highest performing people are most susceptible to choking under pressure, why we may learn foreign languages best when we’re not paying attention, why early childhood athletic training can backfire, and how our emotions can make us both smarter and dumber. All these fascinating findings about academic, athletic, and creative intelligence come together in Beilock’s new ideas about performance under pressure—and her secrets to never choking again. Whether you’re at the Olympics, in the boardroom, or taking the SAT, Beilock’s clear, prescriptive guidance shows how to remain cool under pressure—the key to performing well when everything’s on the line.

Over the course of nearly thirty years, the environmental justice movement has changed the politics of environmental activism and influenced environmental policy. In the process, it has turned the attention of environmental activists and regulatory agencies to issues of pollution, toxics, and human health as they affect ordinary people, especially people of color. This book argues that the environmental justice movement has also begun to transform science and engineering. The chapters present case studies of technical experts' encounters with environmental justice activists and issues, exploring the transformative potential of these interactions.

Technoscience and Environmental Justice first examines the scientific practices and identities of technical experts who work with environmental justice organizations, whether by becoming activists themselves or by sharing scientific information with communities. It then explore scientists' and engineers' activities in such mainstream scientific institutions as regulatory agencies and universities, where environmental justice concerns have been (partially) institutionalized as a response to environmental justice activism. All of the chapters grapple with the difficulty of transformation that experts face, but the studies also show how environmental justice activism has created opportunities for changing technical practices and, in a few cases, has even accomplished significant transformations.

Two crackerjack science journalists from NPR look at why some things (and some people!) drive us crazy

It happens everywhere?offices, schools, even your own backyard. Plus, seemingly anything can trigger it?cell phones, sirens, bad music, constant distractions, your boss, or even your spouse. We all know certain things get under our skin. Can science explain why? Palca and Lichtman take you on a scientific quest through psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and other disciplines to uncover the truth about being annoyed. What is the recipe for annoyance? For starters, it should be temporary, unpleasant, and unpredictable, like a boring meeting or mosquito bites

• Gives fascinating, surprising explanations for why people react the way they do to everything from chili peppers to fingernails on a blackboard
• Explains why irrational behavior (like tearing your hair out in traffic) is connected to worthwhile behavior (like staying on task)
• Includes tips for identifying your own irritating habits!

How often can you say you're happily reading a really Annoying book? The insights are fascinating, the exploration is fun, and the knowledge you gain, if you act like you know everything, can be really annoying.

From the Authors: What Annoys You?


Consider the following story, posted on the Ghana News website on February 11, 2011:

This could well be the quintessential story highlighting what science can tell about why things are annoying. It captures the three U’s. Unpredictable, unpleasant and of uncertain duration.

Unpredictable: Ms. Sexton couldn’t tell when the noise would occur. Every so often Sammi would let loose with the high-pitched squeal of a smoke alarm, but if his schedule for shrieking wasn’t truly random, at least it was known only to him.

Unpleasant: A smoke alarm is designed to be unpleasant. If smoke detectors made a sound like tinkling chimes or chirping birds, we would simply ignore it. No, the idea is to get you up off the couch to shut off that annoying racket before you are engulfed in flames.

Uncertain duration: The reason Ms. Sexton was “pushed to the edge” was there was no way of knowing when the sound would stop. After each screech ended, she must sure have said to herself, “that’s got to be the last one,” only to find to her dismay it wasn’t.

With Ms. Sexton’s troubles in mind, we asked a few of our colleagues, at NPR and beyond, what annoys them.

Christopher Joyce, NPR Science Correspondent
My personal most annoying annoyance is worse than yours. It's worse than anybody's. You know why? Because it nails me when I'm asleep. You, you can be annoyed all day long but you can go to bed at night knowing that except for a noisy neighbor or his dog, or a mosquito in the air, or a lumpy bed, you've escaped the daily mine-field of annoyance. Not me.

No, when I go to bed, I enter the annoyed man's nightmare--the recurring dream. The details change but the theme is always the same. I'm trying to get somewhere important. I'm trying to catch a plane, and time is running out. Trying to get to a meeting or a class on time. Trying to find a bathroom, urgently, of course. Worst of all, trying to rendezvous with a beautiful woman. Oh, yes, that's when it's most annoying.

Because what happens, every time, is that something keeps me from getting there. I'm driving and I get lost. My cab driver stops to get lunch and disappears. There's an accident on the freeway. The public toilets are under repair and out of service. Once there was an earthquake and I had to get out of a car and walk (I think that was a woman-rendezvous dream).

At first, I struggle diligently to find an alternate route--after all, I'm a responsible person, at least in my dreams. I hail down another cab, book another flight. But soon enough it dawns on me that whatever I do is hopeless. I am foiled, again and again. Sorry, flights canceled due to bad weather. Road work ahead. Bridge down. Detour.

Now, I've traveled a lot in my life, all over the place, in war zones and Amazonian rainforests and Tibetan highlands and on rickshaws and in dugout canoes. I KNOW about washed out bridges and drunken bus drivers and chain-smoking customs agents who'll wait days until you come up with the bribe. My subconscious is LOADED with examples with which to impale a traveler like a butterfly pinned to a patch of felt.

Eventually, I reach a stage of weary acceptance. I'm not going to make it to my destination. I realize I'm in that dream again, I'm asleep, and that jerk who lives somewhere in my head is doing this on purpose, writing the script as I sleep, making sure that whatever clever solution I come up, he'll trump it. And there's nothing I can do because that jerk is me...the annoying me, annoying me. Gotta go now...got a plane to catch.

Sandra Blakeslee, coauthor, Sleight of Mind
One of the things that truly irritates me is my local NPR station's broadcast of All Things Considered. The NPR content is excellent but the local "anchor" has the worst news delivery style I have ever heard. Her voice drives me crazy. I have to turn down the sound whenever she starts talking. Equally irritating is the fact that this station has been running the same "ads" (restaurant, physicians etc who pay to tout their support) for what feels like years. Another woman with a chipmunk voice (almost as bad as the news person) says the same things over and over and over and over and over and over. I think one tunes in to the news programs for novelty. When the station never changes it's between NPR segment content, it makes me want to scream. Bottom line, I guess the annoying things are the bad radio voices and the repetition. I will try to think of more examples (I probably don't have to mention the torture of going to the US Post office to get anything accomplished.)

Cornelia Dean, Science Reporter, the New York Times
What makes me crazy is people saying less when they mean fewer, loan when they mean lend, etc. Then I am annoyed at myself for objecting to what are, in effect, real life examples of some of the features that have made English the irresistible language of the world -- its mutability and immunity to the dictates of any "academy."

Sarah Brookhart, Deputy Director, Association for Psychological Science
For me, public transportation is teeming with annoyances. Like bacteria on the handrails, the loud one-sided phone conversations about what to have for dinner are part of the deal when you’re in a subway car at rush hour. Put on headphones and tune it out. But I could probably ignore a colony of deadly microbes more easily than I can ignore the guy sitting next to me clipping his fingernails. Cranking up the iPod doesn’t help. Time stands still. Agonizing suspense after each clip. Has he stopped? Or will there be another click of the teeny guillotine? Then, that unmistakable sound, and a half-moon sliver sails through the air in slow-motion. Worse, I can see it land on the arm of the woman across the aisle; she has no clue, but my skin is crawling with disgust. Sarah Brookhart

R. Alta Charo, Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics, the University of Wisconsin at Madison
“Thank you for choosing Company, Inc. Para la información en español, diga el español o marque el número 2.” There is absolutely nothing annoying about the offer to handle my business in Spanish. What does make me crazy is the certain knowledge that everything after this, whether in English, Spanish or Esperanto, will also involve pressing keys to select from among inappropriate choices, with a less than even chance that after four or five or ten such selections I will actually get to a person. Come to think of it, even getting to a person is annoying, as almost every time they then ask me to recite all the information I’ve been punching in. (“Using your telephone keypad, please enter your ten digit telephone number, starting with the area code.”). First, don’t their computer screens already show them this information? Second, why ask for it when the odds are better than 3-1 that the live person finally talking on the phone doesn’t have answers more individualized than the automated phone system or on-line FAQs? I know! Why not have every company simply send me the training manual for their customer (non)service representatives, and I can just select from the standardized answers and recite them to myself, without the bother of pressing all those keys? I can recite to myself “I apologize for the wait. My call is important to me. Please hold and I will be with me in a moment.” What’s really great about this solution is that I am indeed the representative. So not only do I know I am busy (probably doing email while on-hold) but I can choose precisely which moment I will choose to answer my own call! The maddening uncertainty of the waiting, the irritating not- knowing how many keys I’ll be pressing, all this is magically erased.