For people with social or performance anxiety, it could be just the opposite. In fact, I'll wager that some people diving into an extensive study of leetcode problems are doing it to procrastinate attending actual technical interviews. ("I'm not quite ready yet, gotta make sure I don't blow any interviews.")

That's been me before. If you're wondering why people ghost at the technical when they seemed like great candidates: sometimes, at least, they like engineering because it's a discipline where they can get things "right" within some defined band / acceptable tolerance. In interview context, where there's somebody watching and judging, the degree of tolerance is unknown, and you know you won't be given time to choose the most correct approach regardless, and that solving the technical problem is just an indirect proxy for solving the "is this person a good social fit" problem (because you know you have the technical ability), all acts as anti-motivator for practicing for leetcode style interviews.

Its easier to say "I just didn't study and that's why I didn't get the job" than it is to say "even though I spent a bunch of time optimizing for this interview scenario and know I absolutely aced the technical interview, they still didn't like me."

Heck, I've been in interviews where I found the technical aspect a relatively easy bar to pass, and I blurted out something strange just to sabotage myself. If they can look past that and still see that I know what I'm doing and bring a lot to the table, I know they are people that I can do my best work with without needing to be constantly second guessing myself in conversation.

Some companies seem to forget that interviews go both ways, and that job candidates are screening for something different than what companies are screening for.

The fear of failure also comes from the concept of "cool-off". I recently failed a coding challenge in Zoox only to find out after the rejection that the cool-off period is 2 years!!

I would have never applied to Zoox had I known up-front that I'd have to wait for so long to interview with them again.