Skilled performance degrades under high stakes, in part because attention turns to the execution of an automated skill.
The explicit monitoring account holds that a practised skill runs better without supervision, and pressure invites the performer to supervise it. Home crowds can make it worse rather than better in decisive contests, which is one of the few conditions where home advantage reverses.
In practice
- A putter who has made the stroke ten thousand times thinks about the stroke and misses.
- A presenter who has given the talk twenty times loses the thread on the one occasion it counts.