Social facilitation theory and empirical evidence

Social Facilitation Theory

According to the social facilitation theory one's performance is enhanced in the presence of an audience than in when there is no audience. There are two main factors involved: a personal factor - the mastery or lack of mastery and a situational factor - the presence of others. Nevertheless, a distinction has been made in research according to task difficulty: in easy tasks the presence of others is stimulating and leads to a better performance, while in difficult tasks the audience has an inhibiting and anxious effect.

The testing of this theory is a classic in social psychology and was developed by Zajonc, Heingartner and Herman (1969).

The case study presented, the preliminary study conducted by Jean is an observational study. The hypotheses she wants to test contain the two variables presented above: performance and the audience. The presence of others is the independent variable in an experimental design, while performance is the dependent variable.

1. "The presence of others will improve the performance of teammates who exhibit mastery over their sport as compared to teammates who do not exhibit mastery over their sport."

2. "The presence of others will hinder the performance of teammates who do not exhibit mastery over their sport as compared to teammates who exhibit mastery over their sport."

The observational study she carries on is meant to offer preliminary results that should be tested in an experimental design. After observing a state-wide gymnastics competition for a week she observed that the teams that perform in front of a large crowd score higher than the teams that perform in front of a small crowd and concluded that the two hypotheses are supported. The basic flaw in her research design is the inappropriate testing of the hypotheses.

The observational study should have been followed up by an experiment to test the data.

The experiment should have been projected to include the group of gymnasts. They would have been exposed to a small audience and to a large audience. The independent variable would be the audience and it has two modalities: small crowd and large crowd. The dependent variable, the measured variable in the two experimental conditions would be the performance of the gymnasts.

One way of projecting the experiment is to obtain initial measures of the self-evaluations of the subjects. The self-evaluation should be carried out prior to exposing the group to any of the audiences. The participants should be able to rate their performance both in the experimental situation involving a small audience and in that involving a large audience.

This is also a measure of their self-efficacy prior to exposure to the audiences. The purpose of this act is to see whether the change in their self-evaluation is due to exposure to the audiences. The self-evaluation is done by using a self-administered questionnaire. The second stage is the exposure to the two types of audience. After performing in front of the two types of audiences, the group of gymnasts is asked to rate themselves using the same self-administered questionnaire. Using the subjects' self-evaluation it is possible to identify the changes. And by taking into consideration the changes it would be possible to decide whether the size of the audience had any impact on the performance. However, in such a study it is possible to control the number of people in the audience or not. Moreover, the audience may be made up of accomplices or volunteers. Another important issue that should be established even from the beginning of such research is obtaining the informed consent of the participants. They should agree to be a part of the study, they should be informed about the methods and processes that are to take place and have the right to find out the results of the study.