The participants were asked to reel a piece of string in on a fishing rod both on their own and in front of an audience. Triplett found that when the children were being watched they reeled the string in faster. The name for this improvement in performance whilst being watched is now known as Social Facilitation. .
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John Dashiell (1930) carried out an experiment where participants were asked to carry out complex tasks, such as multiplication tasks, both with and without an audience. In contrast to Triplett's study, the results of his experiment showed that the audience negatively affected the performance of the participants. The poor performance may be due to the task difficulty. .
Zajonc put forward his Drive Theory in 1965. He believed that social facilitation was caused by feelings of arousal brought on by being in front of an audience. There are three main points of Zajonc's Drive Theory, the first being that the presence of others produces evaluation apprehension. This is that individuals feel slightly anxious and apprehensive at the fact that one or more people have the opportunity to assess their performance. Cottrell (1968) did a study of this evaluation apprehension and found that when the audience was blindfolded, the performance of the participants was not altered. Zajonc's second point is that this evaluation apprehension brings about feelings of arousal in the individual, which are caused by adrenaline. In his third point, he suggests that these feelings of arousal increase the likelihood of an individual making a dominant response. A dominant response is a response that is most likely to occur in most situations, and much like a habit, is something that is automatic. Zajonc's conclusion was that there are two types of these responses. The first type of response would be on simple or well-learned tasks. The person's instinct would most probably be correct and therefore enhance their performance.