Gotta Beat ‘Em All: Social Facilitation and Speedrunning
Academic Level at Time of Presentation
Graduate
Major
Experimental Psychology
List all Project Mentors & Advisor(s)
Sean Rife
Presentation Format
Oral Presentation
Abstract/Description
Social Facilitation is the theory that people who normally succeed at an activity do better when there are more people watching them, and people who normally fail at an activity do worse when they are observed. The presence of mind that the audience has on the individual impacts the magnitude of this effect, and can be studied with who is watching, or how many are watching. Other research includes the differences between social facilitation via competition and cooperation (Williams & Clippinger, 2002; Schafer, 2013; Lau, Schwarz,& Stoll, 2019).
The effects of social facilitation on video game performance have been studied in the lab to mixed results (supporting: Bowman, Weber, Tamborini, & Sherry, 2013; Feinberg & Aiello, 2006; against: Kimble & Rezabek, 1992; Emmerich & Masuch, 2018; Williams, 2019), but have many limitations. Participants in the lab know that their data is being recorded; these studies may only be researching mere presence, and not evaluation apprehension. Additionally, dominant responses are difficult to determine after a single attempt of a game in a lab setting.
No study has yet looked at the effects of social facilitation on video game performance outside of the lab setting. The current study uses the public speedrun leaderboard Speedrun.com as a database to analyze social facilitation. The prior number of submissions to a speedrun category is used to predict the player’s time, speed (calculated as a ratio of their time to the first-place time), and place on the leaderboard in three separate linear regressions. Data was analyzed in R. Three separate samples were collected, the first with 1932 submissions from 1866 player accounts, the second with 6918 submissions from 6638 accounts, and the third with 1460 submissions from 1365 accounts. Results mostly support social facilitation, but results vary between studies. The limitations of these samples will be discussed.
Fall Scholars Week 2025
Psychology: Completed Projects
Gotta Beat ‘Em All: Social Facilitation and Speedrunning
Social Facilitation is the theory that people who normally succeed at an activity do better when there are more people watching them, and people who normally fail at an activity do worse when they are observed. The presence of mind that the audience has on the individual impacts the magnitude of this effect, and can be studied with who is watching, or how many are watching. Other research includes the differences between social facilitation via competition and cooperation (Williams & Clippinger, 2002; Schafer, 2013; Lau, Schwarz,& Stoll, 2019).
The effects of social facilitation on video game performance have been studied in the lab to mixed results (supporting: Bowman, Weber, Tamborini, & Sherry, 2013; Feinberg & Aiello, 2006; against: Kimble & Rezabek, 1992; Emmerich & Masuch, 2018; Williams, 2019), but have many limitations. Participants in the lab know that their data is being recorded; these studies may only be researching mere presence, and not evaluation apprehension. Additionally, dominant responses are difficult to determine after a single attempt of a game in a lab setting.
No study has yet looked at the effects of social facilitation on video game performance outside of the lab setting. The current study uses the public speedrun leaderboard Speedrun.com as a database to analyze social facilitation. The prior number of submissions to a speedrun category is used to predict the player’s time, speed (calculated as a ratio of their time to the first-place time), and place on the leaderboard in three separate linear regressions. Data was analyzed in R. Three separate samples were collected, the first with 1932 submissions from 1866 player accounts, the second with 6918 submissions from 6638 accounts, and the third with 1460 submissions from 1365 accounts. Results mostly support social facilitation, but results vary between studies. The limitations of these samples will be discussed.