Sports Psychology - social facilitation

Question 1

What is social facilitation?

Answer 1

The positive influence of others who may be watching or competing on sports performance.

Question 2

What is social inhibition?

Answer 2

The negative influence of others who may be watching or competing which leads to a decrease in sports performance.

Question 3

What are the factors that affect performance identified by Zajonc?

Answer 3

1. The presence of an audience increasing arousal levels.
2. Increase in arousal makes it more likely the performance dominant response will occur.
3. If the skill is simple or performer is an expert the dominant response is more likely to be correct.
4. If the skill is too complex or the performer is at the cognitive stage, the dominant response is likely to be incorrect.

Question 5

What are the effects of social facilitation on Home and Away?

Answer 5

– Teams win more often at home than they do away
– This may be to do with the nature of the audience
– Some research says that playing at home can be a disadvantage because there is increased pressure in front of people they know.

Question 6

What are the effects of social facilitation from personality factors?

Answer 6

– High anxiety (type A) individuals perform less well in the presence of others compared to low anxiety trait (type B) individuals.
– Extrovert tend to seek situations with high arousal levels so they perform better with an audience.
– Introverts away from social situations because they have high levels of internal arousal.

Question 7

What are the effects of social facilitation and levels of experience?

Answer 7

– Previous experience in front of an audience affect future responses
– If you have failed in prints of an audience, you may fail again
– The elite are more likely to do well in front of an audience. The programs in their long-term memory can be applied with little conscious control.

Question 8

How can social facilitation affect performance through types of skills and activities?

Answer 8

– High arousal caused by the audience can help performance of simple/gross skills as they don’t require high levels of perpetual processing.
– low arousal is desirable to optimise performance for complex/fine skills.

Question 9

What strategies are there to minimise social inhibition?

Answer 9

– try using imagery or relaxation techniques or training with people watching you so you are used to it.
– An audience can impair it per performance in the yearly stages of school learning so it is best to teach skills in a non-evaluative atmosphere.
– Athletes must be aware of the negative effects of distractions and be prepared to deal with potentially negative reactions of co-actors and hostile spectators .