Fragile streak goals elicit multimodal pressure responses and late-stage performance decline

Understanding how psychological pressure alters motor performance requires paradigms that reliably induce high-pressure states; yet, laboratory studies often fail to elicit states strong enough to affect performance. We tested whether a fragile goal structure, in which failure resets progress toward consecutive successes, creates a pressure-related state during a task requiring sustained force control. Participants pursued ten consecutive successes or 100 successes irrespective of sequence. Under the streak goal, heart rate, pupil size, and perceived pressure rose as participants approached their maximum streak; under the total goal, heart rate and pupil size showed little modulation. Critically, performance declined at the maximum streak under the streak goal, whereas the total goal showed no corresponding late-stage decline. Movement-vigor measures did not reliably vary with streak progress, suggesting that the decline was not explained by faster, stronger movements. Fragile streak goals provide a scalable context for studying pressure-related responses and goal-structure-dependent, choking-like performance decline in controlled tasks.