Male athletes are more likely to 'choke' under pressure, study suggests

Male athletes are more likely to "choke" than female athletes when in a tough situation, a new study claims.

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev in Israel studied Grand Slam tennis so see how "men and women respond to competitive pressure".

"Our research showed that men consistently choke under competitive pressure.

"But with regard to women the results are mixed," says Dr Mosi Rosenboim of BGU's department of management.

"However, even if women show a drop in performance in the more crucial stages of the match, it is still about 50% less than that of men."

For the purposes of the research, "choking" is described as a decreased performance in response to higher stakes than normal, for example a big prize pot.

The authors of the study hope to use the research "to better understand the labour market" and how gender plays a role in pay for example.

"For example, our findings do not support the existing hypothesis that men earn more than women in similar jobs because they respond better than women to pressure," says Dr Danny Cohen-Zada of BGU's department of economics.

There are limitations to the study, which are explained in their research paper, Choking Under Pressure and Gender.

Researchers say the study is "homogenous with regard to gender" - in other words, men competing against men and women competing against women.

"In the labour market women are required to respond to competitive pressure in a different setting where, for example, they compete with men," says paper co-author Dr Alex Krumer, of the Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research at the University of St Gallen.

"In addition, tennis players may have different preferences and characteristics that may not necessarily make them a representative subject.

"Nonetheless, the fact that we have uncovered such robust evidence that women can respond better than men to competitive pressure calls for further investigation in other real-life tournament settings."

One theory for the differences in how men and women cope in these situations is down to the role of the hormone cortisol.

Previous studies have suggested that high amounts of cortisol are linked to poor second serves in tennis and bad golf performance.

It's thought that cortisol levels in men might increase more rapidly than in women.

The study based its research on 4,127 women's and 4,153 men's tennis games.

"To choke" is a slang term for a mental collapse in difficult or competitive situations.

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