Why does the presence of others improve individual performance in some situations but inhibit it in others? Discuss in relation to theories of social facilitation. Performance in front of other important people in today's world. Lots of competition. It was social facilitation. In order to understand why the presence of others improves or inhibits individual performance, it is necessary to know the theory of social facilitation. Basically, it is the tendency of observed people to perform better than they normally would on their own on simple tasks. This includes tasks that they are able to perform very well in general or that are repeated. Studies on social facilitation concern the extent to which a certain part of an individual's behavior is influenced by the real, imagined or implicit presence of others. In general, social facilitation theory states that people tend to do better on well-learned tasks if an audience is present and worse on difficult tasks. Zajonc developed a theory called drive theory. In this theory he explains that the presence of an audience or other people in general will put the performer in a state of excitement. This state of excitement will make them alert and ready. This excitement is supposed to work on the artists' most likely response. On the one hand, if the performer is good at the assigned task he will make it even better, which will lead to social facilitation. On the other hand, if the performer knows that he is inadequate in a task, this will automatically worsen the performance and therefore lead to social uninhabitability. Furthermore, Zajonc deduced research in which he found that there are many other factors that influence people. shows. For example, the gender of the audience, the auditory facilitation...... in the center of the paper ......al or, as in the last case, the inhibition depends exclusively on the nature of the assigned task. Namely, the interaction between the performer and the task. However, in general, in the research mentioned the presence of an audience or competitors was able to improve the performance or compromise it. This can be explained by the task set. If the task was repetitive and the participants knew what they were doing and therefore knew they would be successful at the task, performance would increase. While more difficult tasks and therefore tasks with participants who did not know how well they would perform, increased the participants' nervousness and put them under pressure, so performance was inhibited. Social facilitation theory also states that if the task is not easy, there will be a greater margin for error due to nervousness..