Psyched Up or Psyched Out?

Texas Enterprise, McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas • August 2011

It’s the fourth round of the Masters Tournament. You’ve made the cut and worked your way up the leaderboard, and suddenly you find yourself paired up with Tiger Woods for the final 18 holes. Are you more likely to get psyched up and rise to the challenge, or will you psych yourself out and crack under the pressure?

Emily Amanatullah, assistant professor of management at the McCombs School of Business, recently completed a study that examines how your game might be affected in such a scenario. Coauthored with Francis Flynn of Stanford University, the study was inspired by the dynamics of golf — specifically, the concept of two people playing alongside each other but not directly competing with one another.

Tiger’s best days may be behind him, but in his prime he was the dominant figure in the game, and his fellow players were well aware of his skill.

In this sense, Woods was a “high-status coactor” — a highly skilled person working on an independent task alongside someone else. Looking at the statistics of golfers playing in the Masters over a five-year span, the researchers found that players paired with more talented partners outperformed those playing with lower-status partners by more than half a stroke.

“Playing alongside a high-status coactor increased performance — individuals were psyched up by the presence of somebody doing the same task who is exceptional at doing what they do,” Amanatullah says.

There is evidence that the same principle applies in the world of business.

Independence vs. Competition

Previous research suggests that the mere presence of skilled individuals can boost the motivation and productivity of those around them, and there are several theories as to why this occurs. One possible explanation is that when someone has high aspirations, they increase their own mental focus and physical effort, leading them to improve their performance.

“The inflated performance expectations assigned to a high-status coactor may generalize, so that others working in close proximity adopt them and subsequently respond by elevating their own performance levels,” the study reports. “That is, a strong performer ‘raises the bar’ for others performing similar tasks nearby, which serves as a positive influence on others’ performance — ‘psyching them up’ rather than ‘psyching them out.’”

Amanatullah says golf was an ideal model for investigating this phenomenon because golfers perform independently of one another — scoring is not directly affected by an opponent’s performance (such as tight defense in a basketball game) but only by individual ability.

Of course, there are some competitive elements to the game. In the Masters, the field of players is narrowed after two rounds, and only the top half of scorers move on to the final two rounds; however, the study included only data from scores in the third and fourth rounds.

“They are competing in a sense, but their performance — completing a round of golf — is not competing with Tiger, because the other person playing alongside you cannot affect your game,” Amanatullah says. “‘Competition’ would mean that someone doing better actually means that you do worse — you’re doing the same thing, and there is some codependence in how you get the job done. But with independent action, you alone are responsible for the end product that you deliver, and nobody can influence that.”

Cognitive Coaction

The researchers then examined whether their findings would translate from the golf course to the workplace. In the lab, researchers ran experiments to test participants’ performance when completing various cognitive tasks.

In one experiment, each participant was asked to solve a set of 50 anagrams, seated alongside another student who was supposedly participating in the experiment but who was actually a confederate working with the researchers. After the first-round test, the experimenter read the test scores aloud. Half of the participants were told that the confederate earned a low score (16 out of 50 correct), and the other half heard that the confederate earned a high score (40 out of 50 correct). After the scores were announced, the students worked on another set of anagrams in a second round.

On average, individuals paired with the stronger performers solved approximately four more anagrams in the second round than those paired with low-status coactors. Like in golf, when the participants worked alongside high-status coactors, their performance improved.

But in another experiment, when participants were directed to compete for an all-or-nothing prize against skilled opponents, their performance declined.

Participants in this study played several rounds of Pac-Man. After the first round, experimenters told players that there would be an incentive for improving their performance in the next round. Some participants were instructed that they would be given 25 cents for every 1,000-point improvement over their first-round score, regardless of how their opponent performed. Others were offered the same incentive — but only the person scoring the most points in the final round would win the money. The participants were also asked to rate the extent to which they viewed their opponents to be “high-status.”

The researchers observed that the first group, the independent participants, performed better when paired with people they regarded as highly skilled; they were psyched up. In contrast, participants in the competitive group experienced a significant decrease in performance as their coactor’s status increased; they were psyched out.

“We found that when you’re in direct competition, you get psyched out and your performance goes down,” Amanatullah says.

Management Applications

Amanatullah says these findings are relevant to a workplace environment because individual coworkers generally do not directly go head to head in a winner-takes-all reward system.

“You’re not really in direct competition with the other person; their performance in no way [limits] your own, since you are each working independently on a task — both on the golf course and at work,” she says. “But being in the presence of other people can still affect the way you get your independent work done.”

There are, of course, instances in which coworkers are actually in direct competition — for sales leads, bonuses, special honors, and other perks. In these cases, the potential for getting psyched out could be heightened.

Amanatullah suggests that managers can draw from these findings as they coordinate the operations of their organizations, especially from a human resources standpoint. Companies could benefit from increasing the visibility of their star employees, while offering rewards and incentives that are independently determined.

“By recognizing that not all coactors are the same, organizations and their members may be able to better harness the benefits of performing in the presence of others,” the study concludes.

— Rob Heidrick