Today’s session

1. Today’s session

2. The evidence so far: • Three studies of social facilitation: • Triplett (1898) • Zajonc et al (1969) • Michaels et al (1982) • What do these studies tell us about the effects of an audience/co-actors?

3. Physiological arousal • How energised, alert or ready for action a person is

4. Arousal & task performance • The Yerkes-Dodson curve • What does this graph tell us about the relationship between a person’s level of arousal and their ability to do a task? performance arousal level

5. B’ground Audience Additional Arousal & task performance lower higher Arousal level worse better Task performance

6. Dominant responses

7. Can we use the idea of dominant and non-dominant responses to explain the findings of Zajonc et al (1969) and Michaels et al (1982)?

8. Dominant responses

9. Why does the presence of others as audience/co-actors increase a person’s arousal level?

10. Three possibilities • Mere presence (‘they just do’) • Increased arousal is a pre-programmed, biological response to others • Evaluation apprehension • We get worried about how we appear to other people • Distraction • Other people distract us, which causes conflict/stress

11. Audience / Co-actors Stress / Emotion Other? How recently learned? How well practiced? Arousal level during task Dominance of response A model of task performance Task performance