1. Impact of an Audience on Sport Performance – Jowett pg. 104 - 112
Performing in front of an audience has been shown to have both positive and negative affect on sport performance
Also there is evidence that both athletes and audience are impacted by the athletes performance from a psychosocial perspective
Purpose of this reading is to address the impact of an audience on the athlete’s physical and psychological elements in performing tasks and skills.

2. Historical Research
As far back as the late 1800’s, research on sport performance had shown:
1. Racing times were faster when athlete’s raced against other rather than the self (Triplett, 1898)
2. Children performed better in novel tasks (ie: winding fishing line on reels) when working in pairs, this led to the theory of increased energy (termed dinamogism)
’s research found that mere presence of others may also adversely affect performance (Social Facilitation)

3. Early Research (Cont.) Social Facilitation
Performance is affected by the presents of others (coaction), but both gains and decrements may result
There is research indication that working in groups compared to working alone helped people to produce greater quantity, but the quality of their work decreased.
Coaction pointed researchers toward the popularly known theory that performance was linked to “arousal states” and the “drive theory”

4. Arousal State & Facilitation
An individual’s state of arousal (or self drive) is heightened during the presence of others (Hull-Spence, 1956)
When aroused, there is a facilitating effect on performance with tasks that are simple or well learned, but a decreased effect on performance when the tasks are complex or novel (Zajonic, 1965, 1980)
Researchers theorized that the presence of others increases the tendency to perform dominant responses but decreased the tendency to perform non-dominant responses.
Social facilitation will occur in performance when others are present, but if the tasks being performed calls for nondominant responses (ie: complicated, unlearned) an audience may interfere with performance (Forsyth, 1999).

5. More Research Needed
Recent studies point to the idea that it is not merely the presence of an audience that effects social facilitation, especially the physiological aspects of arousal, ( ie: Heart rate, Skin Conductance) but also the individuals evaluation or conflict between evaluation and audience presence may be important.
Other physiological examples: cardiac performance, vascular resistance, blood pressure. All of these may effect efficient mobilization of energy while coping and are accompanied by the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine (e.g., Adrenaline).
Understanding the impact of others on sport performance is important to all involved
Coaches
Athletes
Audience (ie; Parents of Youth Sports, Community)

6. Impact on Physiological State
Again, “State” is a temporary characteristic.
Arousal refers to a “degree” of activation, so one can be under aroused (ie: overly motivated) or overly aroused (ie: overly motivated) depending on the situation.
Arousal has been thought to increase in the presence of others.
When performing merely in the presence of others is not being individually monitored (e.g., being blocked out or not paying attention to others) the performer may not produce an increased state of arousal.

7. Audience (Coactors)
An audience is likely to lead to an increased state of arousal when performing, but it can also lead to a reduction in arousal
Increased - when social monitoring (ie: crowd support) and evaluation apprehension (ie: athlete’s not concerned whether they are being negatively evaluated by the audience) is present.
Decreased – when the audience is perceived as supportive, but is providing the athlete’s with information on how to behave or perform.
There may be some social-support benefit (psychological) to having an audience present, but there is question as to whether this leads to significant increases in arousal states (physiological) in athletes.
The physiological states differ between athletes and are dependent on whether the athlete can meet the demands of the situation. If the athlete can, then they meet the “challenge”, if not, then they may perceive the demands of the situation as a threat. So the psychological is interconnected to physiological responses.
Performing “learned” versus “unlearned” tasks, in front of an audience, has also been shown to cause differing physiological responses on subjects performing.

8. The Physiological Effects of Performing Learned vs
The Physiological Effects of Performing Learned vs. Unlearned Tasks in Front of an Audience
Performing “learned” tasks were thought to be a challenge to subjects. Increased cardiac performance but decreased vascular constriction (ie: Blood Pressure) resulted.
Performing “unlearned tasks” in front of an audience, lowered cardiac performance and increase the vascular resistance was the result.
Implications: When an athlete is called upon to do something outside of the realm of his/her skills while in front of an audience, it has a negative physiological impact.
When an athlete is comfortable about the task at hand when performing in front of an audience (ie: well prepared, or well learned skills), he/she is more likely to have efficient energy mobilization.

9. Summary of Blascovich Research
The nature of the changes in arousal (physiologically) resulting from the presence of others may depend on whether an athlete perceives the task or situation as challenging or threatening.

10. Psychological Impact of Audience on Participation in Sport
Internalization
If an individual’s recent behavior conflicts with the self- concept, then self-concept can be changed via a process termed internalization (Tice, 1992)
e.g., missing a series of putts in golf in front of an audience may cause a golfer to revise his opinion of himself as a good putter, whereas the same performance done privately will likely have less of an impact on his perception of his putting ability
e.g., missing a few free throws in a basketball game in front of an audience may prompt the athlete to revise her opinion of herself as a good free throw shooter. The same performance done privately will not have the same affect.
In other words, the athlete internalizes differently depending on the performance while in front of an audience. (the Tiger Woods dilemma, ;-)

11. Coping With Negative Internalization
Make conscious efforts to ignore or block out threatening information
Example: Go to the movie in this link:
Disregard critical feedback from a coach
As a coach, reduce negative feedback to the athlete in front of an audience.
Receiving negative feedback in front of an audience may have an adverse effect on individuals who are prone to avoiding negative information about themselves (termed repressors)
Build self-esteem in athletes. High self-esteem has not been shown to change the perception of the athlete’s ability after failure, but does tend to raise the perception of individual ability after success.
Athletes high in self-esteem may benefit from performing well at home (in front of a supportive audience
Athletes with low self-esteem may be negatively affected by playing poorly away from home in front of a hostile audience
(Baumister and Cairns, 1992)

12. Home Advantage
Investigation has found that home teams in sport competitions win over 50% of the games played under a balanced home and away schedule (Courneya and Carron, 1992)
Advantage of playing at home is an unclear phenomenon. The magnitude of the home advantage varied significantly across sports.
Basketball and Hockey led in the percentage of victories at home
Understanding why teams perform so well when playing at home could involve:
Crowd
Travel
Learning (familiarity)
Rules
(Combinations of these factors are usually present)

13. Audience Characteristics and Home Advantage
Research has been involved with three areas of study on home audiences at major sport contests. They are:
Size
Density
Audience Behavior

14. Size of Audience
Absolute crowd size was positively related to the home advantage among Scottish Soccer Leagues (Nevill, 1994)
No differences were found in similar studies in English Soccer League studies.
Absolute size did not matter with sport performance in studies of Cricket (Bray, 2001)
Impact of crowd size on sport performance is inconclusive overall.

15. Impact of Density on Sport Performance
Size of the crowd is often dictated by the size of the playing venue, so it is suggested that the crowd density (number of people in the audience relative to the facility’s capacity may be a more telling factor (Pollard, 1986).
Pollard’s results showed that crowd density had no association with home advantage in professional English soccer.
Schwartz and Barsky (1977) found crowd density had a positive effect on home advantage in Major League Baseball.
The audience size, as a proportion of capacity, and team performance may attribute the home advantage to the factor of “social support”
Schwartz and Barsky’s studies on density was found to be positively related to game outcomes in Junior Ice Hockey in North America.

16. Audience Behaviors
A qualitative feature compared to crowd size and density
Excessive cheering may have a negative effect on home team.
Home-team performances were superior to opponents when crowd behavior was normally (e.g., cheering and booing) supported.
Despite some evidence that spectator support for the home team is related to greater home-team success, other studies have shown either not effects or a negative effect (Salminen, 1993), (Strauss, 2002b)
Thirer and Pameey (1979) found that visiting teams committed more rule violations and were thus penalized to a greater extent when audiences behaved normally (e.g., cheering and booing).
When audience exhibited extreme antisocial behaviors (e.g., fighting, throwing objects onto playing surface, chanting obscentities, it was the home teams who committed more violations.
So much for the Aggie Spirit ;-)

17. Effect of the Home Crowd on Athlete’s Psychological States
Athletes were found to have elevated confidence and motivation when playing at home compared to away. (Jurkovac, 1985)
Female college players had higher levels of team confidence, or collective efficacy, when playing at home (Bray and Widmeyer, 2000)
Players were less anxious, more motivated and better able to concentrate when playing at home (Bray and Widmeyer, 1995)
Players seem to interpret the home crowd’s presence as a positive influence. However, some research has failed to show distinct difference between players’ psychological states at home or away (Kerr and Vanschaik, 1995)

18. Home Field Disadvantage?
Probably the best known contradictory evidence to the home advantage is that the presence of supportive spectators has a positive effect on performance.
Research has found that during championship series, baseball and basketball teams that hosted the decisive game of the series had a better chance of losing the game (and championship title) than winning (Steinhilber, 1984)
There is probably something to be said about playing the Best of 7 in the NBA, or playing the Super Bowl in a neutral environment.

19. Implications of Audience on Sport Performance
While there is much variation in team performance in the research, “crowd” is a constant for every team.
Attendance usually declines when teams are performing poorly, meaning performance may affect the audience rather than the other way around.
Considerable scope for repeating the research that has been done, as well as expanding this research is vital, especially where implied myths and paradoxes exist.
Coaches need to teach coping skills pertaining to a variety of crowd behaviors

20. Coping Techniques
Arousal has been found to positively impact performance requiring high anaerobic power. e.g., Olympic Lift Competition
Increased arousal could have a negative impact on fine motor tasks through increased muscular tension. e.g. Basketball Free Throw Shooting.
Increased arousal may also effect coordination (lessening the ability to move more freely, and increasing the risk for injury)
Practice Physical Relation Techniques aimed to reduce tension
Slow the breathing,
Provide a relaxing focus of attention.
Removing tension in the muscles.
Practice imagery
Meditation
Key words – Attention trigger
Competitive routine rehearsal – both preevent and perperformance
Note: Keep these short, simple and should involve things that athletes engage in before they perform a key skill.