At some point in life, most of us have found ourselves in situations where we knew many eyes were staring at us, others around us were performing the same task at the same time, or people were cheering us on as we were about to perform a task. Whether it be a race, singing a song, or even writing an in-class essay, somehow the presence of people have an effect on our performance and what results is that either we perform the task better than what we had expected or we choke under pressure. People often think that our performance is determined by either hard work, genetics, or a combination of both, however there are many more determinants that influence the quality of our performance. One factor on how we perform is through social facilitation. This idea states that our performance can be greatly influenced through the mere presence of other people, whether this presence is real, imagined, or implied. When we perform a task, the presence of others can affect our levels of arousal, in a bad way or a good way, depending on the task at hand, the environment, and our physical and mental competency. Social facilitation plays a key role in providing us an overview of how we perform a certain task in the presence of people and when and how it can be beneficial or detrimental to performance. An understanding of this concept will assist us in producing successful results in any task we undertake. It influences behavior and decision-making in profound ways.
The idea of social facilitation was not touched upon, or at least did not see itself in any publishing until 1898 when avid cyclist and sports psychologist Norman Triplett began to notice a trend that cyclists produced faster cycling times when racing with other cyclists compared to when they cycled against the clock alone. Triplett began to conduct laboratory experiments on this phenomenon and time and time again, cycling speeds proved to be greater when performed in groups.