I couldn't find an appropriate term in any of the Asian languages for "performance anxiety," but a similar concept of stage fright had hits. I recently applied to a trivia game show on a whim and got a call from a casting director with trivia questions to see if I would get a "call-back." I was excited about the opportunity, but then I had a day to think about the call-back, which allowed me to think about it and psyche myself up about it, going over all possible scenarios and putting a lot of weight on it. When the call actually came, the first question came up, and BOOM! It was a geography question right off the bat, supposedly one of my better categories, but I didn't know it... about which island in the world is divided into the North Island and South Island. I suspected that I'd heard about it somewhere before, but I just couldn't come up with it on the spot and reach deep in the crevasses of my mind to pull out where I'd heard that before, and gave up and guessed......Greenland, which I knew wasn't it.
The rest of the quiz went similarly, where I was almost sure I'd heard about the answer to the question, but the clues weren't clicking. One answer was right at the tip of my tongue and in a Yan family slip of the tongue I answered "Judas Priest" to "What 2021 movie had consultants from the Black Panthers." Obviously Judas Priest (the band is not it) but I just couldn't get the full movie title. Some answers I just definitely did not know, and some questions I knew the answer to before the question had even finished, but it was those 50-50 questions that I didn't get which sank me, questions that I wonder if on a differnet day where I'd gotten more sleep, or felt more relaxed, or didn't psyche myself about it, I would have gotten in the nick of time. There was even a question that I guessed wrong during the call, but as soon as the call was over I came up with the right answer. Really wish I'd gotten that one back, but hindsight is always 20-20......hearing the answer changes everything even if you think "Oh I definitely would have gotten that," there's a reason why I didn't, whether it's I didn't know the answer well enough or think about it in the right way or misheard the question.
Stage fright is weird that way, and different people have different experiences with performing in the limelight. There are some studies that propose the Hawthorne effect, in which people actually perform better when people are watching them. Others think that it's the opposite, because of the psychological stresses of people watching, you don't perform as well. It's hard to gauge because I can't go back and perform the same test without people watching. I will say during this test I felt a weird sense of embarassment each time I didn't answer a question, as each passing second went by I felt like I was showing how dumb I was not knowing the answer and making the casting director wait. Maybe an irrational thought for me, but that's definitely something I wouldn't worry about if it was a written test. I've definitely felt that type of pressure not to look dumb in front of others, as during my chess-playing career I was often the last player on my chess team with players from both sides watching the game. Luckily, that pressure didn't cause me to lose the game, but there have definitely been times in chess I feel like it's so easy when watching someone else's game to know what the right move is, but when actually playing the game, you're blind to it because you have so much invested and involved in it that you can't think it about it calmly. Playing violin and playing dodgeball in front of others was different because they were just peformance-based activites, my body is always on the move and something is happening, adrenaline is rushing anyway. For trivia and chess, there's also the time factor of the clock ticking, and the more I think about it the less time I have, building up the pressure even more.
I can only imagine what it's like to fight in a UFC fight on live national TV, or be in a national spelling bee with the lights and cameras on and having to deal with the dreaded "schwa" sound knowing that there's a good chance you get it wrong. My heart would be pumping extra hard and be extremely nervous to say the next letter.
One other thing I learned about trivia......I do much better with the questions written out in front of me. The call I did was just like a phone call with no video, so I had to process the questions by voice only, not my strong suite. I'm used to looking at flashcards, writing things down, and probably associating certain words as they are written to others, a strong indication that I'm a visual learning and why I like to read so much. When I watch Jeopardy on Youtube during my long runs (one of the best parts of my day) I do significantly worse trying to get the clues without also seeing the clues in front of me, partly because there are so many small parts of a Jeopardy clue that might lead to the answer, I need to focus on all the words like a detective to dig up the right answer.
One last valuable lesson! Take a deep breath before any nerve-wracking endeavor, whether it's skydiving, asking someone out on a date (I don't have to do that anymore, thank God) or appearing on Jeopardy just to put your mind at ease and operate as close to normal as possible.
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