Excessive Attention Is Detrimental to Performance

A group of researchers at the University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, says that paying too much attention to what you are doing can sometimes prevent you from performing at optimal levels in that particular task.

What this implies is that, at times, too much attention can indeed be detrimental to performance levels. The work was led by expert Rob Gray, PhD, who also authored a new paper on the issue, published in the latest issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Experts have been fascinated by this aspect of the human body for many years. They have been trying to determine what is it that goes wrong when people focus too much on their own bodies, as opposed to the actual task they are doing.

This behavior can most often be seen in athletes and other competitors, who are usually just displaying what they have been practicing for years. Yet, the pressure they feel is nothing like that of the training room, and they are more prone to failure during competition than during rehearsals.

Though telling someone in a stressful situation to just relax and do their thing may not seem such a good idea at first, most competitors know that this is precisely what they should do in order to succeed.

“We think when you’re under pressure, that your attention goes inward naturally. Suddenly it means so much, you want to make sure everything’s working properly. And that is exactly when things go wrong. Something about paying attention to what you’re doing makes it not work right,” Gray explains.

The researcher explains that one of his team's main objective is to discover what goes wrong when people focus so deeply. The group dreams of developing ways of inhibiting these detrimental mechanisms, PsychCentral reports.

“Focusing on what you’re doing makes you mess up, but why? How do your movements change? How can we focus on correcting those issues instead of telling you to stop trying so hard?” the expert says.

Past studies have suggested that anxiety decreases joint freedom, whereas stress and pressure can affect fine motor control. The reasons why these processes take place is however still a mystery.

Identifying the source of these issues, and addressing them topically, could contribute to improving competitors' performances sensibly, the Birmingham team believes.