Performance  

In 1920, when asked to write out as many words as possible in response to a
given word, 93% of participants produced more words in the presence of another
person than alone.  [22]  However, when this study was replicated with
individuals who stuttered when they spoke, 80% of the participants produced
more words when alone rather than in the presence of another person.  [23]

 Lee Edward Travis  conducted a
study to find what kind of effect an audience has on an individual.  [24]
Travis used an  eye–hand coordination  test (holding a flexible pointer on a revolving
target) for his study. Twenty freshmen males, one sophomore male, and one
junior male were used as the subjects. The small audience consisted of four to
eight upper classmen and graduate students and was an equal number of men and
women. Each observer practiced in the presence of the experimenter, and their
learning curve was plotted each day. When the subject attained his maximum
efficiency, the passive audience was brought in. Some of the subjects showed
superior coordination when the audience was present.

In June 1980, Forgas et al. conducted a field study of audience effects,
looking at the performance of expert and novice squash players when observed
by no audience, a male audience, and a female audience. Contrary to Zajonc's
drive-arousal theory, it was found that the effect of an audience on
performance did not differ significantly between novice and expert players.
This indicates that the other factors, such as cognitive variables and
players' interpretation of the audience's presence, also influence players'
reactions to the presence of an audience in a natural setting.  [25]

In 1982, people playing pool were being surreptitiously watched in order to
identify skilled and unskilled players. Skilled players made at least two-
thirds of their shots whereas unskilled players missed at least two-thirds of
their shots. When the observer moved closer to the pool table and continued to
watch, skilled players' performance improved by 14% and the unskilled players'
performance dropped by more than 30%.  [26]

In 2007, Rosenbloom et al. studied archival data from Jerusalem in 2004 and
found that the presence of an additional person in the car during a driving
license test decreased the likelihood that the testee would pass the driving
test. Although the nature of the study made it impossible to distinguish one
explanation of social facilitation from another, the findings generally
support the basic premise of social facilitation theory.  [27]

In 2008, college students were given a list of words and told to copy them as
quickly as they could. The "easy task" was to write out one list with their
dominant hand and the "hard task" was to write out another list with their
nondominant hand. While completing the task, they were in the presence of an
image of their favorite television personality (displayed on a computer
screen) or an image of another character from the same show. When given the
easy task, they wrote more words in the presence of their favorite character
and when given the hard task, the favorite character inhibited their
performance. As shown, while the college students were given tasks, their
favorite television characters are perceived as "real" in a social
facilitation paradigm which gives evidence as to how social facilitation can
affect performance.  [28]

In 2008, Hill, Hanton, Matthews, and Fleming studied sub-optimal performance
in sports, also known as the phenomenon of "choking". They determined that
when individuals were worried about negative evaluations by the audience, and
performing tasks that they were not familiar with, they often would perform at
a lower level than when they did without an audience.  [29]

In 2011, Anderson-Hanley, Snyder, Nimon, and Arciero found that older adults
riding "cybercycles", virtual-reality enhanced stationary bikes with
interactive competitions, exercised at higher rates than adults riding
stationary bikes.  [30]

In 2012, Murayama and Elliot conducted a meta-analysis where they found that