Performance pressure is a commonly experienced phenomenon across contexts such as school, work, or sports, yet its impact on task performance is debated (Botvinick & Braver, 2015; Maloney et al., 2014). Feelings of performance pressure can arise from a variety of causes, such as group or societal expectations, extrinsic incentives, or perceived demands that exceed a person’s coping resources. However, how such feelings of pressure are likely to impact performance is not clear. Some theories emphasize pressure’s negative impact via heightened anxiety (Beilock & Carr, 2005), while others highlight the positive effect of pressure as a performance stimulant (Chiew & Braver, 2013). This dissertation used a meta-analysis and an in-lab experiment to examine the effect of pressure on task performance, measuring both a range of motivational outcomes as well as performance skills. In Study 1, I conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the diverse effects of experimental pressure manipulations on performance, and to identify potential meta-analytic moderators that could explain the variability. Study 1 revealed that the effect of pressure was heterogeneous, and the meta-moderators could not predict the direction of a pressure effect. In Study 2, I conducted a p-curve analysis to assess the evidential value of the reported moderators in existing literature. The results demonstrated that there was a lack of evidential value for the interaction effects between pressure manipulations and the reported moderators. As these data did not allow me to test nuances that might explain the heterogeneity of pressure effect in the first two studies, I took an experimental approach in the next study. In Study 3, I conducted an experiment to test how pressure and feedback, which is an under-considered factor in the field, would affect individuals’ task performance, motivation and anxiety. Results suggested that pressure, when paired with different types of feedback, has distinct effects on individuals’ anxiety levels and motivation. Specifically, feedback that indicated a person is unlikely to succeed at meeting a performance goal when under pressure did not affect performance scores, but did negatively affect several aspects of motivation and anxiety. Collectively, my dissertation provided some new directions for investigation in relation to motivation, but showed that the heterogeneous effect of pressure on performance scores seems to be idiosyncratic (i.e. not in a way that could be consistently predictable a priori), or at least the heterogeneity could not be explained across tasks by existing theorized moderators. Future research should prioritize on recruiting larger sample sizes and preregistered experiments as these would give the field a more robust empirical footing for reasoning about the heterogeneity.