Effects of Social Facilitation on Basketball Athletes
Wei Shi (Yaya)
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California
PSYC355: Social Psychology
Professor Miranda Barone
October 25, 2021
, Introduction
Social facilitation has been a long-studied topic in social psychology, dating back to the
bicycle race and fishing reels studies conducted by Norman Triplett back in 1897. I first noticed
the phenomenon of social facilitation in my own life when I played varsity basketball back in
high school. My school had a great emphasis on basketball with a division-1 girls varsity team,
and being under the intensity of such a high level of competition and not being a very great
player myself, I found the open audiences games to be very hard. I noticed that I am much more
aggressive, competitive, and perform better at practice where no outsiders are watching, but
when I am playing a game with audiences, I start sweating, getting nervous, and seem to play
worse than I could. I remembered thinking that I could embarrass myself and the team if I don’t
do well, and that pressure caused me to not be relaxed enough to play to my potential. Being
interested in this, I wanted to interview my friend Clarice, a talented basketball player who was
also on my high school basketball team and is now recruited by USC women’s basketball team.
By getting some insight from people who went through the process of being not very good at
basketball when they first started to then gaining more skills and confidence and eventually play
at a college level, I can look into how social facilitation has affected them differently when they
were inexperienced versus when they were skilled at basketball.
Clarice started basketball in 6th grade. Being of a height of 6’5, she felt like people were
always putting high expectations on her to be a very good player, when in fact she was only a
beginner. At the beginning of her high school career, she endured a lot of pressure from the
constant attention and expectation of others being the only “big” in the team (which made her the
star). When she plays, she thinks that everyone would be judging her playing, and reported
Wei Shi (Yaya)
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California
PSYC355: Social Psychology
Professor Miranda Barone
October 25, 2021
, Introduction
Social facilitation has been a long-studied topic in social psychology, dating back to the
bicycle race and fishing reels studies conducted by Norman Triplett back in 1897. I first noticed
the phenomenon of social facilitation in my own life when I played varsity basketball back in
high school. My school had a great emphasis on basketball with a division-1 girls varsity team,
and being under the intensity of such a high level of competition and not being a very great
player myself, I found the open audiences games to be very hard. I noticed that I am much more
aggressive, competitive, and perform better at practice where no outsiders are watching, but
when I am playing a game with audiences, I start sweating, getting nervous, and seem to play
worse than I could. I remembered thinking that I could embarrass myself and the team if I don’t
do well, and that pressure caused me to not be relaxed enough to play to my potential. Being
interested in this, I wanted to interview my friend Clarice, a talented basketball player who was
also on my high school basketball team and is now recruited by USC women’s basketball team.
By getting some insight from people who went through the process of being not very good at
basketball when they first started to then gaining more skills and confidence and eventually play
at a college level, I can look into how social facilitation has affected them differently when they
were inexperienced versus when they were skilled at basketball.
Clarice started basketball in 6th grade. Being of a height of 6’5, she felt like people were
always putting high expectations on her to be a very good player, when in fact she was only a
beginner. At the beginning of her high school career, she endured a lot of pressure from the
constant attention and expectation of others being the only “big” in the team (which made her the
star). When she plays, she thinks that everyone would be judging her playing, and reported
