Social Facilitation

The concept of social facilitation is that having an audience affects our performance. Zajonc defined social facilitation as ‘The consequences upon behaviour, which derive from the sheer presence of other individuals’.
Moran, (2004) describes social facilitation as ‘the improvement in peoples performance that can occur as a result of being part of a group or being observed by other people’
The reason for this increase in performance is because we naturally become aroused in the presence of an audience. These increases occur because of an increase in social monitoring, evaluation apprehension, and attentional conflict. Jones (piece of paper)
Arousal levels create an influence on performance, however, it is not always clear what this relationship is. The following theories help to explain these relationships:

Drive Theory

Psychologists first saw the relationship between arousal and performance as a direct linear one. Martens Et Al (1990) Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology Second addition drive theory suggest that as an individual’s arousal or state anxiety increases, so to does his or her performance. The more psyched up an athlete becomes the better she or he performs. Zajonc (1965) used drive theory to show that presence of others increases arousal in the performer and this increased arousal (Drive), which increases or brings out the performers dominant response.

The Inverted U Hypothesis

The Inverted U Hypothesis originated from Yerkes and Dodson (1908) the idea is that for every task there is an optimum level of arousal. Performance peeks at this level and drops off above and below it. This insinuates that as arousal increases so does a performance, however, only up to an optimal point where best performances are achieved. Further increases in arousal however, can cause performance to decline, so this view is represented by an Inverted U that reflects high performance with the optimal level of arousal and lesser performance with either...