The Impact Of Competition And The Presence Of Others On Performance

Numerous attempts have been made to explain how and why competition and the presence of others affect performance. The most popular of these theories was Zajonc's drive theory of social facilitation which advocates that the presence of audience and competition increase arousal and therefore impair the acquisition of new responses and facilitates the emission of well-learned responses. PURPOSE: To re-examine Zajonc's theory on the effects of competition and the presence of audience on performance of a novel task. METHODS: Following practice, twenty-four physically active young adults (21.70 ± 3.13 yrs) were assigned to one of two groups (skilled or unskilled) based on their practice scores. Each participant performed two blocks of six attempts on a novel dart- aiming task under three conditions (alone, competition and audience). Participants also completed a Sport Emotions Questionnaire following each condition to measure their state anxiety. In addition, participants' heart rate was monitored continuously during the three testing conditions to measure physiological arousal. RESULTS: A significant interaction (p=0.028) between condition and skill level was revealed as a result of the repeated measures ANOVA. While performance of the skilled group improved under audience and competition conditions, the unskilled group's performance deteriorated under these conditions. Highly significant differences (p<0.001) were found between the state anxiety levels under the three conditions, with the highest being under audience followed by competition then alone conditions. In addition, significant differences (P=0.008) were found between heart rate during performance, with the audience condition inducing the highest heart rate followed by competition and alone conditions. CONCLUSION: Performance of a novel task in the presence of an evaluative audience or in competition by skilled performers was facilitated while performance of the less skilled ones deteriorated. The results also indicated that the presence of evaluative audience and competitive significantly increased performers' anxiety level and heart rate. The results provide further support for the learned drive hypothesis in explaining the role of competition and evaluation apprehension in influencing performance of motor skills.