The impact of precaution and practice on the performance of a risky motor task.
The association between threat perception and motor execution, mediated by evolved precaution systems, often results in ritual-like behavior, including many idiosyncratic acts that seem irrelevant to the task at hand. This study tested the hypothesis that threat-detection during performance of a risky motor task would result in idiosyncratic activity that is not necessary for task completion. We asked biology students to follow a particular set of instructions in mixing three solutions labeled "bio-hazardous" and then repeat this operation with "non-hazardous" substances (or vice versa). We observed a longer duration of the overall performance, a greater repertoire of acts, longer maximal act duration, and longer mean duration of acts in the "risky" task when it was performed before the "non-risky" task. Some, but not all, of these differences were eliminated when a "non-risky" task preceded the "risky" one. The increased performance of idiosyncratic unnecessary activity is in accordance with the working hypothesis of the present study: ritualized idiosyncratic activities are performed in response to a real or illusionary threat, as a means to alleviate anxiety.
Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv 69978, Israel.
Hila
H
Keren
Departments of Psychology and Anthropology, Washington University, St Louis, MO 63130, USA.
Pascal
P
Boyer
Human Performance Wing, US Air Force Research Laboratory, WPAFB, OH 45433, USA.
Joel
J
Mort
Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv 69978, Israel.
David
D
Eilam
affect; anxiety; behavior; cognition; emotion; precaution