Facts about Social Facilitation Effect
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Mere presence of passive observers, even when evaluation is impossible, can trigger the social facilitation effect, suggesting arousal alone partially explains the phenomenon.
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Evaluation apprehension, the concern about being judged by observers, is recognized as a key mechanism explaining why the social facilitation effect occurs.
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The social facilitation effect has been demonstrated in non-human animals, including cockroaches running mazes faster in the presence of an audience.
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Norman Triplett's 1898 experiment on cyclists is widely considered the earliest empirical study of the social facilitation effect.
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Robert Zajonc's 1965 theory of the social facilitation effect proposed that the presence of others increases arousal, which enhances performance on simple tasks but impairs performance on complex ones.