I Do Better When Other People Are Around?

Norman Triplett (1897-1898) conducted the first social psychological experiment, in which he first "discovered" the social facilitation theory. The original theory suggested that people perform better on tasks when other people are around. The problem with this experiment is he lacked the handy use of SPSS, and because of modern statistical methods, researchers have recently found his original study to have non-significant results, thus making his study not so cool (Strube, 2005). The results of Triplett's original study showed that people did not in fact always perform better on tasks when other people were around, and instead they seemed to do better or worse, depending on the task and the individual. These contradictory results confused psychologists at first, up until Robert Zajonc (1965, 1980) conducted his own research showing a three step solution as to how social facilitation really works.

First, the presence of other creates an arousal which facilitates the behavior. Second, the arousal enhances the dominant response (the natural or default response) and last, the performance of the task at hand is dependent on whether or not it is simple or difficult for the performer. Using this new model of social facilitation, we can see that the presence of other does not always equate to someone performing better on a task, as the dominant response could be wrong or flawed. Therefore, if a person is not comfortable playing a sport because they just started to play, then putting 100 spectators is just going to make his/her performance worse. However, if you put a professional athlete in the same situation, then the presence of other is just going to fuel his/her performance.

I have seen the effects of social facilitation on myself. Back in middle school, I wasn't the biggest fan of any sport, but my school team really needed an extra defender for the upcoming soccer match, as the real player was absent for whatever reason. It wasn't a big game or anything, so they asked if I could be a temporary substitute. I had never played soccer at the time so I had no clue what I was doing, and I was just standing there looking really stupid, as all the players around me were moving around trying to get the ball. I'm not saying that I could have played much better without all those other people looking at me, but the presence of others definitely did not help my situation. It's funny when I think about it now, because I became a huge soccer fan later on.

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References

Strube, M.J. (2005). What did Triplett really find? A contemporary analysis of the first experiment in social
            psychology. American Journal of Psychology, 118, 271-286.
Triplett, N. (1897-1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American Journal of 
             Psychology, 9, 507-533.
Zajonc, R.B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149, 269-274.
Zajonc, R.B. (1980). Compresence, In P.B Paulus (Ed.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 209-220). New
            York. Guilford.