Social facilitation and coping with stress.

Abstract

Drive theories of social facilitation typically assume that the presence of an audience is threatening or aversive. In some social situations such as hospitals, however, the presence of others (particularly doctors or nurses) observing one's behaviour may represent a safety signal rather than a threat signal. Such an audience should therefore reduce anxiety rather than increase it. To test this possibility 20 hospitalized psychiatric patients were exposed to a stressful film either alone or with a nurse present as an audience. The experiment was repeated with 20 non‐patients. The effects of the nurse on the dependent variables of autonomic response and verbal report of stress, while not completely consistent, supported the view that this particular audience represented a safety signal and not a threat signal. The results are discussed in terms of alternatives to the Hull‐Spence learning theory that is used in most social facilitation research. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of cognitive variables in understanding social facilitation.