Impact of active and passive social facilitation on self-paced endurance and sprint exercise: encouragement augments performance and motivation to exercise

Abstract

ObjectiveThe positive effect of an audience on performance is anecdotally well known, but the impact of such social facilitation to both performance and the motivation to exercise have not been thoroughly explored. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate verbal encouragement as a means to promote positive behavioural adherence to exercise and augmented performance.MethodsTwelve untrained but active individuals (seven female), age 24±3 years participated in this study. Exercise conditions with external verbal encouragement (EVE) and without external verbal encouragement (WEVE) were compared in both endurance (20 min) and sprint (2 × 30 s Wingate) cycling tasks in a randomised crossover design. Results were analysed by separate 2 (EVE/WEVE) × 2 (sprint/endurance) within-subjects analyses of variance for each dependent variable. Statistical significance was set at p≤0.05.ResultsEVE resulted in a significant increase, F(1,11)=15.37, p=0.002, ηp2=0.58 in the average power generated by participants in each exercise bout on the cycle ergometer. EVE also had a significant effect on reported motivation to exercise the next day, F(1,11)=5.5, p=0.04, ηp2 =0.33, which did not differ between type of exercise.ConclusionExternal encouragement in both sprint and endurance activities resulted in large improvements in performance and motivation to continue an exercise regimen the next day, which has important implications for health, adherence and maximising physical performance using a practical intervention.

Augmenting Performance: Vocal Activity Compared to Presence in the Social Facilitation of Running

“…In an examination of both short-distance and long-distance running, it was found that active social facilitation caused a significant difference in subject performance in running trials, via experimentation conducted on untrained but active individuals (Edwards et al, 2018). Verbal encouragement was found to bolster the performance of the subjects in both endurance and sprint exercises, suggesting the positive impact of active social facilitation on running of those who are not competitive runners (Edwards et al, 2018).…”

“…Students who did not participate in a sport were expected to be most impacted by social facilitation, as it was believed that their lack of sports activity would cause their inability to control their pace following the introduction of a facilitator. This hypothesis was created as a result of past conclusions on social facilitation, which showed statistically significant improvements in ability while one was in the presence of others and while completing tasks of familiarity (Strube, 2005;Allport, 1924Allport, /1975Zajonc, 1965;Edwards et al, 2018).…”

“…Two treatments were named and designed to align with use in a study published in 2018 in the BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine (Edwards et al, 2018): the external vocal encouragement (EVE) and without external vocal encouragement (WEVE) treatments. In both the EVE and WEVE conditions, the social facilitator was hidden for the duration of the first half of the running distance and introduced only at the start of the second half, where they stayed present for the remainder of the trial.…”

Optimal Development of Youth Athletes Toward Elite Athletic Performance: How to Coach Their Motivation, Plan Exercise Training, and Pace the Race

“…Modifying either an athlete's perception of the importance, probability or controllability of successfully achieving the goal of a task, will thus modify pacing behavior through increased or decreased motivation (Rhoden et al, 2015 ; Wolff et al, 2019 ). Factors such as false or deceptive feedback (Williams et al, 2014 ), encouragements (Edwards et al, 2018 ), racing an opponent (Konings et al, 2016 ), modifying the salience of the reward or the probability of attaining a given goal (e.g., to be close to one's personal best, to be close to a top-3 ranking or qualification) (Schiphof-Godart et al, 2018 ) can enhance performance through by adapting pacing behavior. All of these factors modify either the weight of the “costs” of the task or the “reward” of reaching the set goal, hence increasing or decreasing athletes' motivation to exert effort (Schiphof-Godart et al, 2018 ).…”

Performance increments without audience: paired data from mixed martial arts fighters during COVID-19

“…It is not exclusively familiar peers who may impact an athlete's performance, as recent research has shown how for example basketball players performance are affected by sheer audience size (Böheim et al, 2019). This effect has also been shown when bench spotters are present (Sheridan et al, 2019), presence of verbally active peers in cycling tests (Edwards et al, 2018) and when in company of other competitors (Hibbert et al, 2018). In other words, the present audience may play a partial but significant role in the fighter's performance.…”