Reducing Evaluation Effects in Mere Presence

To test for mere presence effects without evaluation, subjects were told that the person present was part of a “blind experimenter” procedure and was not allowed to know anything about the task. Facilitation of a simple copying task was found, but only when the confederate could not be monitored by the subjects. This finding supports the existence of mere presence effects without evaluation. Support is also given to a monitoring model of mere presence effects, although a particular form of the distraction hypothesis cannot be ruled out. A new test of the validity of self-report measures in social facilitation research leaves open the question of whether demand characteristics have influenced previous self-report measures.