Social Facilitation with an Online Gaming Audience
Date
2022-08
Authors
Cox, Charles
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Abstract
The study examined whether social facilitation took place when examining video game performance with an online audience present. Using a survey design, participants reported on their mastery of a set of video games and then predicted their performance on those games when an audience was present versus not present. Self-reported mastery and predicted performance values were positively correlated in both social contexts. Additionally, most participants estimated decreased performance when playing with an online audience. We did not find evidence that those who predicted an audience would help performance showed higher mastery than those who thought an audience would hurt performance. Finally, findings showed that narcissism moderated the relationship between mastery and performance for both the audience and no-audience contexts. This study is important to society given the growing prevalence of online observation of performance. Overall, social facilitation theory can be useful for understanding the world of the internet.
Description
Keywords
social facilitation, narcissism, social anxiety, video gaming
Citation
Cox, C. (2022). Social facilitation with an online gaming audience (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.