Sometimes pilots don’t even try to make
it out of a spiral dive . La n g ew i e s ch e
ca lls that “one G all the way dow n . ”
W
hat happened to Kennedy that
night ill u s t rates a second major
d i f fe rence between panicking and ch ok-
i n g. Pa n i cking is c
onve n t i onal failure, o f
the sort we tacitly understand. K e n n e d y
p a n i cked because he didn’t know enough
about instrument flyi n g. I f h e’d had an-
other year in the air, he might not have
p a n i ck e d , and that fits with what we be-
l i eve—that perf o rmance ought to im-
p rove with experi e n c e, and that pre s s u re
is an obstacle that the diligent can ove r-
c om e . But ch
oking makes little intuitive
s e n s e . Nov o t n a’s problem wasn’t lack of
d i l i g e n c e ; she was as superb ly con d i-
t i oned and schooled as anyone on the
tennis tour. And what did experience do
for her? In 1995, in the third round of
the Fre n ch Open, Novotna ch oked eve n
m o re spectacularly than she had against
G ra f, losing to Chanda Rubin after sur-
re n d e ring a 5–0 lead in the third set.
T h e re seems little doubt that part of
the re a s on for her collapse against Ru -
bin was her collapse against Gra f — t h a t
the second failure built on the fir s t ,
making it possible for her to be up 5–0
in the third set and yet entertain the
thought
I can still lose
. I f p a n i cking is
c onve n t i onal failure, ch oking is para d ox-
i cal failure .
Claude St e e l e,a psychologist at St a n-
f o rd Unive r s i ty, and his colleagues have
d one a number of e x p e riments in re c e n t
years looking at how certain groups per-
f o rm under pre s s u re, and their fin d i n g s
go to the heart of what is so stra n g e
about ch ok i n g. Steele and Joshua Aron-
s on found that when they gave a gro u p
o f St a n f o rd undergraduates a standard-
i zed test and told them that it was a
m e a s u re of their intellectual ability, t h e
white students did mu ch better than
their black counterp a rt s . But when the
same test was presented simply as an ab-
s t ract labora t o ry tool, with no re l ev a n c e
to ability, the scores of b
l a cks and whites
w e re virt u a lly identica l . Steele and Aron-
s on attribute this dispari ty to what they
ca ll “s t e re o type thre a t” : when black stu-
dents are put into a situation where they
a re dire c t ly con f ronted with a stere o -
type about their group—in this ca s e,
one having to do with intell i g e n c e— t h e
resulting pre s s u re causes their perf o r-
mance to suffe r.
Steele and others have found stere o-
type threat at work in any situation
w h e re groups are depicted in negative
w ays .G i ve a group of q u a l i fied wom e n
a math test and tell them it will measure
their quantitative ability and they’ll do
mu ch worse than equally skilled men
w i ll ; p resent the same test simply as a
re s e a rch tool and they’ll do just as well
as the men. Or consider a handful of
e x p e riments conducted by one of
St e e l e’s former graduate students, J u l i o
G a rc i a , a pro fessor at Tu fts Unive r s i ty.
G a rcia gathered together a group of
w h i t e, athletic students and had a white
i n s t ructor
lead them through a series
o f phys i cal tests: to jump as high as
t h ey could, to do a standing bro a d
j u m p, and to see how many pushups
t h ey could do in tw e n ty secon d s . T h e
i n s t ructor then asked them to do the
tests a second time, a n d , as yo u’d ex-
p e c t ,G a rcia found that the students did
a little better on each of the tasks the
s e c ond time aro u n d . Then Garcia ran
a second group of students through
the tests, this time replacing the in-
s t ructor between the first and secon d
t rials with an Afri ca n - Am e ri ca n . Now
the white students ceased to improve
on their ve rt i cal leaps. He did the ex-
p e riment again, on
ly this time he re-
placed the white instructor with a black
i n s t ructor who was mu ch taller and
heavier than the previous black instru c-
t o r. In this tri a l , the white students ac-
t u a lly jumped less high than they had
the first time aro u n d . Their perf o r-
mance on the pushups, t h o u g h , was
u n changed in each of the con d i t i on s .
T h e re is no stere o typ e, a fter all , that sug-
gests that whites ca n’t do as many push-
ups as black s . The task that was affe c t e d
was the ve rt i cal leap, b e cause of w h a t
our culture says :
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