social facilitation

The presence of others is an important factor when discussing arousal of the performer. It is generally accepted that the presence of an audience increases arousal and this in turn will affect performance. Zajonc (1965) proposed the term Social Facilitation to describe situations when the presence of an audience increases arousal and performance is improved. Social inhibition is used when describing how increasing arousal leads to decreases in performance. This is based on the principles of Drive theory and the dominant response occurring. When in front of an audience, players in the cognitive phase of learning will experience a rise in arousal and the dominant response would contain mistakes resulting in poor performance. Conversely, a performer in the autonomous phase would find this arousal improves performance with the dominant response of correct skills. However, inverted U theory can also be applied to this idea as different levels of arousal can facilitate performance if this takes the performer into their optimum arousal level.

Evaluation apprehension is when a performer feels they are being evaluated in some context by a crowd member; this feeling of evaluation causes arousal levels to increase

In some sports the audience does not only include spectators but also people who make judgements on the individuals’ performance, these can be judges in sports such as ice-skating and gymnastics, scouts and selectors in sports like football, rugby and cricket. Sometimes an individual may feel that their parents or friends who are watching are making judgements on their performance and it increases anxiety; this perception is known as evaluation apprehension.

Evaluation apprehension is more likely to occur if:

*The judges are of high status like team selectors

*The perceived evaluator is of the opposite sex

*The performer has low self-efficacy

*The performer’s ability level is low

*The audience are openly and verbally critical

*The event is important and the result is critical

*The previous performance was poor

*External rewards are high

Strategies to Combat Social Inhibition and Stress Management Techniques

See Arousal section

It is clearly important for a performer to manage levels of arousal so they can operate in their optimal zone or point. Strategies can be used to either increase or reduce arousal to the optimum level for best performance. Selective attention is a method of blocking out irrelevant cues such as crowd noise; it helps to avoid distractions and therefore prevents arousal from rising to high.

Although performers may experience both somatic and cognitive state anxiety in times of stress, often they are affected more by just one of these types of anxiety. For this reason, if a performer experiences somatic anxiety then sports psychologists will work with the performer on somatic methods of maintaining optimum levels of arousal. Similarly, those who experience more cognitive anxiety will be given cognitive methods for reducing arousal.

Others in sports performance setting can be:

• passive (audience/co-actors)
• interactive others (competitors/spectators).

1. audience – those watching either as spectators at the event or at home via the different forms of media, including television, the radio or the internet

2. co-actors – those performing the same task but not in direct competition, e.g. another player on a badminton court

3. competitive co-actors – those in direct competition with the performer, e.g. another badminton player in a game

4. social reinforcers – those with a direct influence, e.g. a coach.