Sport Spectators Flashcards
Direct influence
noticeable impact on performance
Indirect influence
subtle and theoretical impact
Home Advantage in Sports
Research shows that home teams benefit from crowd support, familiarity with the venue, and reduced travel fatigue.
Key factors include familiarity, crowd support, and increased motivation due to fans’ expectations.
Kelman’s Model of Social Influence
CII
Compliance: Changing behavior to meet audience expectations or avoid disapproval.
Identification: Performing better when identifying with or wanting approval from the audience.
Internalization: Long-term behavior change aligned with personal beliefs or values, often seen when an athlete believes in performing well for their home crowd.
Latane’s Theory of Social Impact (1981)
Strength (S): The significance or power of the audience, such as their status (e.g., experts, friends, or fans).
Immediacy (I): How close the audience is to the athlete, both in physical space and time (e.g., live stadium spectators vs. remote viewers).
Number (N): The size of the audience—the more people present, the stronger the social impact, though with diminishing returns as crowd size increases.
Latane’s The ory of Social Impact (1981) formula.
Formula: Social Impact (SI) = Strength (S) × Immediacy (I) × Number (N)
Influence of Passive Spectators
Social facilitation refers to how an individual’s performance is influenced by the presence of passive spectators or co-actors.
Pioneering studies by Norman Triplett (1898) and Burnham (1910) laid the foundation for this field.
Early research focused on co-acting settings rather than competitive environments.
Seminal Studies on Social Facilitation (1910s-1920s)
Seminal studies by Moede (1920) found that performance often improved in the presence of passive spectators.
Key early findings:
Increased performance was due to ambition and satisfaction.
Performance variability decreased in group settings.
Social facilitation vs. social inhibition began to emerge as research areas.
Social inhibition – performance suffers in more complex or stressful tasks
Allport’s Explanation: Social Facilitation and Rivalry (1924)
Floyd Allport (1924) coined the termsocial facilitationand explained its causes:
Rivalry: Competition with co-actors increases effort and performance.
Facilitation: Mere presence of spectators enhances performance.
His experiments used association tasks to compare performances alone and with passive spectators
Zajonc’s Integrated Activation Theory (1965)
Social facilitation and inhibition
Zajonc (1965) explained the conflicting results in earlier studies by distinguishing between:
Simple, well-learned tasks: Performance improved in the presence of others (social facilitation).
Complex, novel tasks: Performance worsened in the presence of others (social inhibition).
The presence of others increases arousal, enhancing dominant behaviors but inhibiting new or complex behaviors.
Memorize soaical facilation model
s
Evaluation Apprehension and Attention Models
Low self-esteem and high self-efficacy
Evaluation Apprehension Theory (Cottrell, 1968): Performance is affected by the fear of being judged by spectators.
Individuals with high self-efficacy perform better under evaluation, while those with low self-esteem perform worse.
Distraction-Conflict Hypothesis: Spectator presence can distract the performer, creating an attention conflict between the task and the audience
Biopsychosocial Model of Social Facilitation (Blascovich, 1996)
Challenge and threat
Blascovich’s model integrates physiological, cognitive, and emotional processes: (PCE)
The presence of others increases the importance of the task.
Performance depends on whether the task is seen as a challenge or a threat.
Simple tasks are perceived as a challenge, leading to improved performance; complex tasks are seen as a threat, leading to decreased performance.
Visualization of capacity model
memorize
visual of biopsychosocial model
memorize
Virtual Presence and Social Facilitation
Recent studies have explored the influence of virtual audiences on performance.
Examples:
Feltz et al. (2011): Students held a plank position longer when co-planking via Skype.
Murray et al. (2016): Rowing performance improved in virtual reality with a virtual teammate.
Virtual spectators are less impactful than live audiences, but still exert measurable influence.
Home Advantage and Social Influence of Active Spectators
Spectators are not just passive; they can actively influence athletes through behaviors such as cheering, booing, or other distractions.
These influences can be bothpositive(support) ornegative(distraction or discouragement).
Active spectators can exert social influence through visual (e.g., waving flags) and auditory cues (e.g., shouting, singing).
Negative Impact of Hostile Spectators
Laird (1923): First experiment to study the effects of hostile spectators (“razzing”).
Negative feedback led to significant drops in performance, especially in coordination-based tasks.
Different sports are affected in different ways by spectator behavior.
Impact of Active Spectators on Effort-Based Tasks
For effort-based tasks (endurance, speed, strength), positive spectator engagement can increase motivation and performance.
Edwards et al. (2018): Verbal encouragement led to better performance in endurance and sprint tasks.
Otte et al. (2021): Soccer players performed faster under positive auditory cues (crowd singing), but accuracy was unaffected.
Home Advantage and Referee Influence
Spectators can influence referees, indirectly affecting game outcomes.
Studies show that home teams often receive favorable decisions (more fouls called on away teams).
Nevill et al. (1999, 2002): Referees awarded more fouls to away teams when exposed to crowd noise.
Does Spectator Density Matter?
High spectator numbers don’t always correlate with home advantage.
Studies show little to no correlation between spectator density and performance outcomes (Strauss & Bierschwale, 2008).
Latané’s psychosocial law: The influence of each additional spectator diminishes as crowd size increases.
Choking Under Pressure
Choking under pressure: Performance decline when athletes are under high stress and expectations.
Baumeister & Steinhilber (1984): Anticipation of success in front of supportive home crowds can increase self-awareness, leading to poorer performance.
Research shows that “choking” is more likely inskill-based tasksthan in effort-based tasks.
Social Influence of Active Spectators
Spectator influence on athletes is complex, with both positive and negative effects.
Active support boosts effort-based tasks, but hostile behavior can hinder coordination and precision tasks.
The role of spectators in home advantage is significant but not the sole factor.
