Valence of anticipated evaluation and social facilitation

Abstract

An expectancy-based explanation of social performance that focuses on the valence of evaluation that is anticipated from an audience was presented and tested. As was predicted, an interaction between a subject's performance expectations and whether he or she performed alone or in the presence of an evaluative audience was found. Subjects expecting to perform successfully anticipated a positive evaluation from an audience, resulting in improved performance over subjects working alone. Conversely, when subjects expected to perform poorly a negative evaluation was anticipated from an audience, although in the overall analysis social performance decrements did not reach significance. However, a comparison with a performance baseline condition, and a reanalysis of data from subjects who did not receive preliminary performance feedback, indicated that both social facilitation and impairment effects were evident. Results are discussed in terms of an expectancy-based explanation of social performance.