Social facilitation effects: Mere enhancement of dominant responses?

Abstract

Five experimental studies of social facilitation are reported. These were conducted as part of a project which set out to investigate cognitive aspects of social facilitation effects by examining the impact of cognitive factors on drive (and therefore task performance) under conditions of audience presence. The first two studies failed to obtain evidence that cognitive factors mediate audience effects but, more surprisingly, failed also to find evidence of social facilitation effects per se. Three further studies, each using a different experimental task, also produced no evidence at all of these supposedly well‐established effects. These findings are discussed in the context of other studies which also suggest that enhancement of dominant responses is not a reliable consequence of audience presence. An attentional model of facilitation/inhibition effects is tentatively outlined as a means of reconciling the present findings with the undisputed fact that audience presence, along with other factors, can both improve and impair task performance.