Social facilitation of dominant responses by the presence of an audience and the mere presence of others.

Abstract

Experiments have shown that the presence of an audience affects individual performance b y enhancing the emission o f dominant responses. A n experiment was conducted t o evaluate the proposal o f Zajonc that the mere presence of other persons is responsible for audience effects. A total o f 4 5 university students performed a pseudorecognition task; 1 5 performed the task alone, I S performed the task before a n audience o f 2 passive spectators, and 1 5 performed the task in the presence o f 2 persons who were not spectators. The task placed previously established verbal habits i n competition with each other. The presence o f a n audience enhanced the emission o f dominant responses, but the mere presence of others did not.