Sport Topic 6- Audience effects Flashcards
what do psychologists mean by audience effects?
an example of social facilitation. This is a general term covering the effects of being in the presence of other people. Audience effects occur in response to being watched. In most cases teams perform better playing at their home ground.
What did Triplett find?
that children wound fishing reels faster in the presence of other children that when they were asked to perform the same action alone. He also found that cyclists rode faster when training in teams than on their own.
what is zajonc’s drive theory?
The idea that other presence can improve of impair our performance depending on whether this is a dominant response or not.
What id Michaels et al (1982) show us?
assessed the skill level of pool players in a university bar. the presence of an audience of the above average players and impaired the performance of below average players.
What did naeve and wolf (2003) find in terms of the home advantage theory?
Found that football teams playing at home were more likely to win than a visiting team. they believed this to be because the players experienced a huge surge of hormones prior to the game. they believed that this could be due to an evolved drive to defend home territory, which lead to more aggressive displays when playing at home.
What did Weinberg and Gould 92011) suggest in terms of ‘championship choke’
suggest that home games in the regular season may be an advantage but when it comes to important matches playing at home can lead to ‘championship choke’
What is the aim of Zajonc’s experiment 1?
Proposes that the presence of other cockroaches increased arousal in all cockroaches and led to task improvement.
What was the sample in Zajonc’s study 1?
72 adult female cockroaches
What was the method in Zajonc experiment 1?
using a cockroach run with a light at one end, Zajonc timed cockroaches to reach the end of the run after the light had been switched on. A simple well learned tasks. he measured the average of 10 trials. there were three conditions; alone; co-acting audience; non co-acting audience.
What were the results found in Zajonc experiment 1?
cockroaches running in the maze co-action condition took longer to reach the goal box than cockroaches running alone. however, cockroaches in the runway co-action condition took less time to reach the goal box than cockroaches that ran alone. the same results were found in the audience condition.
So, in both co-action and audience maze performance was impaired, but runway performance improved in comparison to solitary performance.
What was the aim of zajonc experiment 2?
the first experiment established the presence of other cockroaches affected performance. however, this left the question as to how the presence of cockroaches might have their effect. experiment 2 tested the effect of visual and olfactory (smell) cues on performance.
What was the sample in zajonc experiment 2?
180 female cockroaches
What was the method in Zajonc experiment 2
-kept in individual dark jars for 4 days before the experiment
-design: Independent measures; 6 conditions (3 maze and 3 runway; alone, mirrored walls, carton impregnated with roach smell next to the runway or maze)
What were the results of Zajonc experiment 2?
In the runway condition both the visual and olfactory cues led to the cockroaches taking longer to run the runway than in the alone condition. In the maze condition the odour slowed them but the mirrors sped them up.
What were the conclusions of Zajonc experiment 2
Ambiguous results, and did not easily fit with drive theory. One possible explanation is that mirrors and smells did not provide sufficient cures and that other cockroaches needs to be present for real audience and co-action effects to occur. On the other hand, cues may have distracted them.
