A new experimental paradigm to manipulate psychological pressure as a spectrum using consecutive successes

This study aimed to establish and evaluate a novel experimental paradigm for comparing three or more conditions with various levels of psychological pressure, using the concept of consecutive successes. Participants performed a force exertion task, while their heart rates were recorded as a measure of arousal and force error was recorded as a measure of performance. Experiment 1 of the study confirmed that manipulation of psychological pressure using consecutive successes was effective, as indicated by an increase in heart rate. However, contrary to observations in previous studies, their performance improved with increasing pressure. Experiment 2 ruled out order effects as the cause of the performance improvement observed in Experiment 1, supporting the idea that pressure levels influence performance. These findings suggest a linear relationship between pressure and performance under specific task conditions.