Social facilitation from Triplett to electronic performance monitoring

This article reviews the origins and development of social facilitation theory beginning with N. Triplett's (1898) early work during the late 1800s. Early studies of the phenomenon focused on individual performance enhancement when others were present. Performance impairments were observed but not explained until R. B. Zajonc's (1965) integration of previous work that provided a coherent explanation for earlier inconsistencies. Beginning with his drive theory, the authors describe various social, physiological, behavioral, and cognitive explanations for social facilitation that have been advanced over the years and discuss their origins in some of the earliest social psychological research. Finally, the authors present their own framework for examining social facilitation phenomena and highlight problems and opportunities for advancing the theory.