Audience presence is least likely to enhance performance during which task type?
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Answer: D. memorizing a script
Explanation
Audience presence causes social facilitation or inhibition, but complex tasks are least likely to benefit. Memorizing a script is a difficult, high-cognitive-load task that suffers under the stress of an audience. Social inhibition impairs performance on complex or unfamiliar tasks due to heightened physiological arousal. Robert Zajonc explained that audience presence increases physiological arousal, boosting performance on simple tasks. Conversely, performance on complex, unmastered tasks deteriorates when individuals feel evaluated by onlookers. Social psychology distinguishes between well-learned dominant responses and novel complex task requirements.
Public speaking anxiety often impairs memory recall when actors or students try to recite scripts live. Teachers schedule solo testing environments for complex exams to minimize detrimental social inhibition effects. Athletes perform better on practiced routines in front of crowds but struggle with complex novel strategies. Running is a well-learned, simple motor task that typically benefits from audience social facilitation. Adding numbers is a routine arithmetic task that can be performed efficiently despite audience presence. Taking a final examination relies on high-level cognition, but memorizing a script represents the classic inhibition task.
- Subject
- Psychology
- Category
- Psychology
- Topic
- —
- Difficulty
- medium
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