← all facts
performance
You are harder on yourself during simple tasks.
Social facilitation reveals that the presence of others improves performance on simple, well-rehearsed tasks but degrades performance on complex ones.
If you are learning something new, doing it in front of others likely causes more errors than when practicing alone.
You perform best in silence when you are still a beginner.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Robert Zajonc, 1965
- What the check found
- The claim accurately captures the classic Zajonc social facilitation model, which remains a foundational theory in social psychology, though modern research has added nuance regarding evaluation apprehension.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.