Here's an interesting article showing that people tend to either give up or try too hard when competing against a superstar. It also is another study which shows that paying for performance can produce worse performance.
In the early 1960s, the psychologist Sam Glucksberg demonstrated that the [choking during competition] could also inhibit creativity. He gave subjects a standard test of creativity known as the Duncker candle problem. The "high drive" group was told that the person solving the task in the shortest amount of time would receive $20. The "low drive" group, in contrast, was reassured that their speed didn't matter. Here's where the results get weird: The subjects with an incentive to think quickly took, on average, more than three minutes longer to find the answer.
Most of the article shows that people tend to give up (or, conversely, try too hard) when competing against a superstar. See The Superstar Effect by Jonah (Jim) Lehrer, April 3, 2010.
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