Social facilitation in condition- and coordination-based motor tasks: The role of extraversion and neuroticism

Social facilitation describes changes in performance that occur in the presence of others. Previous research suggests that such effects are not uniform across tasks but depend on characteristics of the person and the task. In particular, spectator presence may facilitate performance in condition-based tasks and impair performance in coordination-based tasks. Individual differences may further determine if, how and how strongly people respond to the presence of others. The present study examines whether personality traits, specifically extraversion and neuroticism, moderate the effect of spectators on motor performance across condition- and coordination-based motor tasks. The study uses a within-subject experimental design with two spectator conditions (performance with vs. without spectators) and two types of motor tasks (condition-based vs. coordination-based). The spectator condition is manipulated by having four peers passively observe the participant during the motor tasks. Participants are approximately 100 students from classes at one school in Germany, comprising students from grades 6 to 12. Participants complete a short questionnaire including demographic information and the extraversion and neuroticism scales of the BFI-2-S. Motor performance is assessed using established procedures from the German Motor Test (Deutscher Motorik-Test; DMT) as well as an 800m run. The primary research questions concern whether spectator presence affects motor performance differently in condition-based and coordination-based tasks and whether these effects are moderated by the personality traits extraversion and neuroticism. The planned analyses use multilevel models with task-specific motor-performance outcomes as dependent variables, spectator condition and task demands as within-person predictors, and either extraversion or neuroticism as a between-person moderator. Age is included as a covariate, and a random intercept for participant accounts for the repeated measurements. The primary focus is the analysis of the three-way interactions between spectator condition, task demands, and extraversion or neuroticism.