A new way to trigger responses in the body by simulating psychological pressure

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed an experimental method to induce a strong physiological response linked to psychological pressure by making participants aim for a streak of success in a task.

Their findings, appearing in iScience, suggest this approach reproduces pressure-like conditions in a laboratory setting more effectively than traditional methods, affording easier access to the study of this state. That in turn could open up research into how pressure influences human performance in physical and intellectual tasks.

Whether in an exam hall or on the field, to “crack” under pressure is a common trope. But what’s the reality behind this idea? It’s easy to assume that with greater pressure comes a greater chance of losing your composure. To know, then, how to overcome this could yield greater performance benefits. But the path to study such ideas is far from simple.

Being rigorous in the field of psychology is extremely difficult, as there are limitless factors that can impact different people in different ways. Previous experimental methods have been limited in that they failed to induce strong physiological arousal.

Driven by such limitations and an urge to better understand the impacts of pressure on performance, Professor Kazutoshi Kudo and his team at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences set out to devise a better method.

Testing the impact of streak goals

Their aim was to find how to produce strong physiological arousal in subjects in ways that allowed them to isolate the effects of different kinds of tasks, so that the nature of the tasks, settings and other variables could be methodically measured and accounted for. It was also important for them that their method could exist at larger scales than is often possible for tests and trials in this field.

“We tested a simple idea: If people aim for a streak of consecutive successes, does the feeling of being on a roll produce a measurable change within the body or to their performance?” said Kudo.

“In a simple force exertion task, people aiming for 10 successes in a row showed an exponential rise in heart rate with improved accuracy. But when the goal was to simply make 100 total successes, removing the streak mindset, both the heart rate and performance changes disappeared. The takeaway is that how we frame a goal can strongly shape both arousal and performance.”

The team set up two simple tasks and had 30 participants try them. In the first “streak-goal” experiment, 15 people had to press a sensor with a specific amount of force, not too much or too little, and they had to try and get it right 10 times in a row.

In the second “totals-goal” test, a group of 15 were tasked with getting 100 successes overall, but they did not have to be consecutive. During the tests, participants’ heart rates were measured to gauge their state of arousal.

Key findings and surprising results

Kudo and team found that in the first experiment, people’s heart rates rose rapidly the longer they maintained their streaks, showing they were feeling more pressured. What was a little surprising, though, was that their performance—the ability to accurately reproduce an equal amount of force with their finger each time—improved rather than dropped.

In the second experiment, heart rates and performance levels remained far more consistent. All this implies the sense of pressure only really came when the idea was to keep a streak of successes going.

“The streak goal produced a large, escalating rise in heart rate as people approached longer streaks, on the order of about 20 beats per minute in our lab setting, much larger than in typical lab experiments,” said Kudo.

“Also, under the streak goal, performance improved steadily rather than dropping, at least for this simple task. And when the goal was totals instead of streaks, both the heart‑rate rise and performance gains vanished, showing that the mindset of fragility—one miss resets everything—is what drives the effect.”

Implications for future research and applications

To many, these findings will seem intuitively obvious; racing a clock, or performing contingent rather than independent actions will naturally make some feel more pressured. But the point of these experiments was to demonstrate that this method can tease out the differences in responses in a controlled and measurable way.

The “consecutive success” method gives scientists a simple and efficient way to create psychological pressure in a lab environment without needing external drivers such as rewards or audiences, which have been used in the past.

“Many lab studies make simple binary comparisons—pressure vs. no pressure—and often produce only modest physiological changes, which don’t fully match the psychological pressure people feel in real life,” said Kudo.

“We wanted a continuous, scalable way to raise stakes trial by trial, without money, judges or crowds. The streak frame does exactly that. As the streak grows, each trial matters more, so we asked whether this would more faithfully capture real‑world pressure and how it relates to performance.”

This idea could also evolve into tools to study athletic training, mental health, stress management, education and even musical performance. Though, before then, the team aims to build upon these early experiments.

At present, there are limitations due to the size of the groups, which were also all male, and the simplicity of the tasks, alongside some other more technical constraints.

“We plan to recruit more diverse participants, including women and a wider age range, and test cognitive and artistic tasks alongside motor ones. Heart rate, self-report and other sensors will track the sense of pressure felt across groups and contexts. Because our arousal manipulation is simple and nonverbal, it could even extend to animal studies, enabling comparative research on the neural mechanisms underlying performance changes during high-arousal situations,” said Kudo.

“We think training could become more pressure-aware, athletes and musicians could practice near their tipping point, and therapists could use gentle streak goals to build precision and confidence in rehab. The low cost and portability of our methodology make it suitable beyond use in the lab.”