The Theory of Facilitating Task Performance in the Presence of a Virtual Audience

In the present study, the author investigated the effects of the presence of the virtual audience on task performance of different tasks (easy tasks and difficult tasks) and anxiety levels, including trait anxiety and state anxiety. Social facilitation was observed in the easy tasks when the virtual audience was present, whereas social inhibition was not observed in the difficult tasks. These findings differed from those observed by the human audience. To investigate the reason for these results, the author analyzed the participants' trait anxiety before the experiment and state anxiety after the experiment. The results showed that state anxiety elicited by the virtual audience was significantly lower than that elicited by the human audience, elevated state anxiety might result in decreased task performance.