Audience Effects

• Social facilitation is the positive effects that other people have on a person's performance of a task.
• Zajonc's drive theory said that the effect of other people has a positive impact on a person if they are completing a dominant task (familiar) but will cause excess arousal that will worsen our performance on a non-dominant task.
• Michaels tested audience effects on pool players in a university bar. By observation, the 4 researchers assessed the skill level of players then approached the players and their performance was predicted by drive theory. The presence of the audience improved the performance of the above average players (social facilitation) but impaired the performance of below average players (social inhibition).
• Cottrell's evaluation apprehension theory said that social inhibition effects could be explained by the level of anxiety experienced by the performer. The performer knows that the audience has the power to either reward them or punish them. The performer experiences a high level of anxiety as a result of evaluation apprehension which has a negative impact on their performance.
• Home team advantage says that if a team is playing at home they have a greater chance of winning. Schwartz and Barksy analysed data from several sports including baseball, basketball, ice hockey and football. The strongest effect was in basketball which they said caused the home team to be more offensive. This supports drive theory as it says the home team has the dominant task and the away task has the non-dominant task.
• Home team disadvantage says that the home team may perform worse at home because their fans have an expectation that they will win. The home crowd could cause arousal overload for the home team leading to a worse performance.
• Zajonc aimed to provide evidence for drive theory using cockroaches using 2 experiments:

  1. Tested whether the performance of a cockroach running a maze and a runway would be affected by the presence of other cockroaches as a co-actor/partner or an audience.
  2. Investigated audience effects when an audience is simulated but not present.
• Zajonc had 2 samples:

  1. 72 adult female cockroaches,
  2. 180 adult female cockroaches, 60 in each condition.

  Each cockroach was kept in the dark at a constant temperature of 75 degrees and fed apples for the week before the experiment.
• In experiment 1, the cockroaches either had to complete an easy task (straight runway) or complex task (maze). A light was shone at the beginning to frighten the cockroach to run from it, they measured how fast the cockroach took to start and to complete the task. Some cockroaches were measured with a partner/co-actor and/or an audience.

  In experiment 2, the cockroaches were either in the mirror condition, the odour condition (smell of other cockroaches while they were completing the task), or the solitary task. The DV's were the same as experiment 1.
• Experiment 1 found in the runway task, cockroaches started their run and completed it more quickly in the presence of other cockroaches. For the maze task, in the co-actor condition, the cockroaches took longer to run the maze but they ran the maze quicker with an audience.

  Experiment 2 found that start times did not differ across conditions but performance in the maze condition was facilitated but impaired in the odour condition.
• Zajonc concluded that results were reasonably consistent with drive theory as when the task was simple, participants performed better in the presence of others. When the task was more complex they performed better without a co-actor. The fact this is reversed with the audience does not fit neatly with drive theory.
• Automatic processing through practice

  According to Zajonc's drive theory an audience causes us to perform better at dominant tasks. So if athletes train in order to make their tasks dominant they will be able to enter automatic processing for motor skills. This means that their sport will become dominant and they will perform better in front of an audience.
• Biofeedback

  Zajonc's drive theory shows that when performing in front of others our arousal/anxiety levels increase. Biofeedback can allow athletes to learn to regulate their physiological arousal levels in the presence of spectators. Technical equipment can be used to monitor physiological responses such as increased heart rate.
• Context Dependent Memory

  Grant's research showed that if information is learnt in the same conditions as it is retrieved then they will perform better. This can be applied to a sport setting by creating an environment that an athlete will train in. Such as having an audience present, or listening to music before a game.