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RESEARCHERS FIND FRIENDLY FACES MAY LEAD TO FAILURE WHEN PERFORMING DIFFICULT, SKILL-BASED TASKS
People "Choke" Under Pressure In the Presence of Supportive Audiences
WASHINGTON - Imagine you have been invited to give your first
public piano recital in a local high school auditorium, and you invite a
few friends and relatives to attend the performance, believing that a
sympathetic, supportive audience will allow you to do your best. You
would be better served by telling your supporters to stay home,
according to new research that finds that people perform better on
difficult, skill-based tasks in front of hostile audiences than friendly
crowds.
Researchers Jennifer L. Butler, Ph.D., of Wittenberg University,
and Roy F. Baumeister, Ph.D., of Case Western Reserve University,
writing in the November issue of the American Psychological
Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
conducted three studies to determine the effect of supportive audiences
on skilled performance. The authors defined supportive audiences as
those who want the performer to do well and are likely to provide
encouragement. In each of the studies, participants performed the same
skill-based task in front of a supportive, neutral, or hostile audience
or no audience at all.
In the first experiment, participants had to execute a stressful
arithmetic test while being observed by a friend or a neutral stranger.
While those who performed before a friend reported less distraction and
stress, they made more errors and took more time to do the task than
participants doing the math test for a neutral audience.
In the other two experiments, participants played a computer
game, and all observers were strangers. In the second experiment,
participants were told that both they and the audience would receive
money if they attained a certain score (the supportive audience
condition), while in the neutral audience condition, only the performer
would receive a cash prize for achieving the predetermined score. The
findings from this experiment again illustrate that those who performed
before supportive audiences were slower and less accurate than those who
faced a neutral audience, even though participants reported being less
distracted and feeling less stressed when facing a supportive audience.
In the final experiment, the psychologist added an adversarial
audience condition, in which either the participant or the observer
would win money; if the participant attained a certain score, he or she
would win the money, but if the participant failed, the observer would
receive the sum. While the researchers told each participant that the
'winning' score was preset for everyone, they assigned each participant
to either the easy criterion condition (in which the winning score was
easily attainable based on the participant's scores in a pre-test
practice session) or the difficult criteria condition (in which the
winning score was well above an individual's practice score).
The results indicate that there was no measurable performance
difference in the easy criterion condition. But in the difficult
criterion condition, those who performed for a supportive audience were
less likely to succeed than those who dealt with a neutral or
adversarial audience. Thus when the task was easy and participants
expected to do well, there was no clear drawback in performing in front
of a supportive audience. However, when performers doubted their
ability to succeed and were faced with a difficult task, supportive
audiences impaired achievement.
The psychologists maintain that the supportive nature of the
audience interacts with the difficulty of a task. They note, "Having a
supportive (or adversarial) audience will have the greatest impact on
performance on difficult or challenging tasks." While the experiments
indicate that people prefer a supportive audience, those confronted with
an adversarial audience performed better, worked quicker, and were able
to maintain a reasonable degree of accuracy.
The researchers note that the poorest performances occurred when
people had supportive audiences but were facing a challenging and
difficult task. Facing an adversarial audience, performers may feel
that they have little at stake because the crowd will not like them, and
they do not concern themselves with disappointing the audience or making
mistakes. Thus the performer can respond to the difficult situation by
adopting an aggressive style and taking risks, including increasing
speed, strategies which enable them to succeed. The authors conclude
that, "to choose between a supportive and a neutral or adversarial
audience is to choose between feeling better versus doing better."
Article: "The Trouble With Friendly Faces: Skilled Performance
With a Supportive Audience" by Jennifer L. Butler, Ph.D., Wittenburg
University, and Roy F. Baumeister, Ph.D., Case Western Reserve
University, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 75,
No. 5.
(Full Text available from the APA Public Affairs Office
or on the Internet after November 6 at
http://www.apa.org/journals/psp.html)
Jennifer L. Butler, Ph.D. can be reached at 937-327-7486
or [email protected].
The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC
is the largest scientific and professional organization representing
psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association
of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 155,000
researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through
its divisions in 50 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 59
state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to
advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of
promoting human welfare.
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