Psychological Reports, 1979, 44, 1065-1066. @ Psychological Reports 1979 SOCIAL ANXIETY A N D SOCIAL. FACILITATION GREGORY T. FOUTS University of Calgary Summary.-A measure of social anxiety was used to predict whether 40 college students' performance on a simple task would be socially facilitated or impaired by the presence of an audience. The social facilitation hypothesis (Zajonc, 1965) states that for welllearned responses, the presence of another or an audience (CotrreU, 1968) is a source of motivation and should enhance performance; whereas for responses not well-learned, an audience may not enhance (and may impair) performance. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships between the two types of anxiety, general anxiety (Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, 1953) and a specific anxiecy (social anxiecy), and social facilitation on a simple task. The importance of these relationships lies in their application. Most school situations involve the presence of others, e.g., peers, teachers; if it were possible to predict the motivational effect associated with such audiences by a questionnaire, then it would appear possible ro determine which students would be betcer able to learn and perform in the classroom as opposed to studying alone. For example, if a student has negative anticipations or anxiety associated with audiences or being observed due to past experiences, i.e., social anxiety, an audience may increase motivation and produce social facilitation on a simple task (better performance in the presence than absence of an audience) or social impairment on a difficult task (poorer performance with an audience). Forty college students (20 of each sex) performed a simple lever-pulling task alone and in the presence of an unfamiliar female audience. Each student was escorted to an experimental booth and instructed to pull a lever horizontally each time a light signalled a response. Another experimenter (outside the booth) controlled the activation of the light and recorded the duration of each response. The light was activated every 30 sec. for 5 min. under each condition, alone, audience. Order was counterbalanced across students. Each student then completed a questionnaire which included the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, the 15-item Social Anxiety Scale, e.g., "I prefer individual sports over team sports, I prefer eating alone at times, I would rather study alone than with friends," and additional filler items.' The mean durations of lever-pulling in conditions, alone and audience, were computed and converted to speed scores. Difference scores (audience 'The scale and item intercorrelations are available upon request: Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2920 24th Ave., N . W . , Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4.

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alone), computed for each student, ranged from -.23 to .15, with negative and positive scores indicating social impairment and facilitation, respectively. A Spearman rank correlation was computed among each of the test scores and the difference scores, T T J I A ~= .ll ( p > . l o ) and r s ~ = s .32 ( p .025 ) , respectively. There was no significant correlation between scores on the two tests. The significant but small correlation between social anxiety and performance in a simple task indicates that the performance of socially anxious students was improved somewhat by the presence of an audience. The absence of a significant correlation between manifest anxiety and performance suggests chat the social facilitation effect is not related to a general personality trait, but to a specific motivational state associated with the presence of others. The implication of this finding is that such information may be used to discover the optimum conditions under which a student may learn and perform. For example, if testing indicates that a student is anxious in dass or in the presence of peers and difficult materials are required to be learned, two alternatives might foster efficient learning. First, change the situation so that social anxiety is not elicited, e.g., permit him to study alone or use a teaching machine in privacy. Second, provide the student with social experiences in the presence of others which desensitize the social anxiety, i.e., change the student rather than the learning situation. The latter alternative has the advantages of ( a ) not having constantly to monitor the difficulty of materials which influences whether social facilitation or impairment occurs, ( b ) allowing the student to continue with the usual school routine, and ( c ) preparing the student for the learning situations found in public schools.