Focuses on the result of a study about the level of human
performance on a certain task when surrounded by audience who are either
supportive or adversarial. Type of audience where people performed
better; How supportive audience hinder people's performance.
By
Michelle Gallagher, published on May 01, 1999
PERFORMANCE
Think twice before inviting your family, friends and co-workers to
your next poetry reading, karaoke session or piano recital. The presence
of friendly faces might actually hinder your performance.
Jennifer L. Butler, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at
Wittenberg University, studied the effects of a supportive audience on
performance in skill-based tasks. She recruited 46 undergraduate students
to play an Atari video game while being watched by spectators who were
either supportive, passive or adversarial.
When players were aware that the task at hand was easy, it didn't
matter who was watching. The audience only mattered when the performance
was a challenge. Surprisingly, Butler found students performing in front
of the hostile audience got the highest game scores; cheering fans, in
fact, caused the Atari players to do worse than those observed by neutral
spectators. Performers also overestimated how well they had done in front
of a supportive audience, and underestimated how well they were received
by passive and unfriendly audiences.
You'd think that a booing crowd would kill performance. But Butler
uncovered a whole new set of performance dynamics. People attempt to do
better than usual when put in front of a friendly audience, she says.
They become highly self-conscious, slowing down and "paying attention to
all the fine details in order to micro-manage every little piece" of the
task. The tactic ultimately leads to lower scores. "If we are aware of
which factors help and which factors hurt performance," says Butler, it
may help people do better in day-to-day life." The key may lie in
deciding between enjoying a friend's moral support--or actually doing
well.
Tags:
assistant professor,
atari,
audience,
behavior,
co workers,
family friends,
fine details,
friendly faces,
friends and co,
game scores,
hostile audience,
karaoke session,
moral support,
paying attention,
performance,
performance dynamics,
piano recital,
poetry reading,
self-consciousness,
spectators,
support,
supportive audience,
undergraduate students,
video game,
wittenberg university
