Frisbee on Founders

           Yesterday, I was on Founders Green with one of my apartmentmates, Callie, who had brought a Frisbee to toss after we had finished planning our PAF session for later that day. I’m definitely not the best at Frisbee and it takes me quite a while to warm up and actually give a throw that is remotely near the person I’m trying to throw the Frisbee to. It had been a while since the last time I played, but I was starting to get the hang of it again, and it helped that Callie would compliment me on every throw, even if the Frisbee landed closer to where I was standing than to where she was.

            Everything changed when one of Callie’s friends on the ultimate Frisbee team was walking by and started to play with us. I got a little nervous, since both Callie and this guy are experienced and skillful compared to me. I started to think about the social facilitation and inhibition principles that we had learned in Social Psychology last Thursday, which definitely did not help my nervousness. I assumed that since I was not very good at Frisbee, the presence of this newcomer would make me perform even more poorly. And by worrying about my performance, I was distracting myself from the task at hand. I could tell that I was focusing so much on making a good throw that the throw actually turned out horribly. I was definitely overthinking Frisbee.

            In my eyes, I thought I did a lot worse when Bill came to play with us. Callie told me that I “held me own”, but I wasn’t sure if she was just being nice. I was definitely more conscious of my bad throws when I was playing with Callie and Bill, probably because I was throwing to Bill most of the time, as opposed to just playing with Callie. I wanted to make a good impression on this person whom I had never met before, while I felt no pressure with Callie since I’ve lived with her for two years now and nothing I do should surprise her. In this way, I was paying more attention to my bad performances when playing with the both of them, which could have led to a skewed interpretation of how I was doing overall.

            To determine if how I perceived myself playing was an accurate representation of how I was actually playing, I would have to count the number of good and bad plays I made. I assumed that I would play poorly in the presence of Bill since I know that I’m not good at Frisbee. Frisbee is a non-dominant task for me, thus added social pressure should inhibit my performance, according to the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Knowing this, I anticipated a poorer performance on my part. This could have either led to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which I played more poorly because I expected to, or perhaps it only made me more conscious of my mess-ups when I was actually playing the same, or maybe even better because of practice. From my perspective, I thought I wasn’t doing to well, but Callie thought I had gotten better from when it was just the two of us passing. The only way to find out, then, would be to actually monitor my passes and determine if Bill facilitated or inhibited my performance. I’m sure Bill had no idea about the inner-turmoil he was causing me to experience.

            I told Callie about my social psychological musings afterwards, and she had something interesting to add to the conversion. She said that when she plays Frisbee with ultimate players who are on her same skill level, she feels no pressure and plays well. But when she has to make a pass to the highly skilled players, she feels the pressure to make a great pass and to impress them. Ultimately, though, this backfires and she notices that she always does worse. It is important to not just consider the presence of others when we performing tasks, but also who is present. From personal experience, I always feel more nervous during a presentation or interview as opposed to talking to friends or other people who do not intimidate me. Sometimes, this works in my favor and I perform better, but in other cases, it works against me.

            When looking at performance in a certain situation, one has to consider both the task at hand as well as the people involved.  While simply having an audience in and of itself does affect how we perform on a task that is dominant or non-dominant, our perception of the individuals involved in the situation can also have a great influence. Throwing a Frisbee has become natural for Callie, while it takes me much more effort and practice to get the hang of it. However, when she is put in a situation with people she perceives as experts, she doesn’t perform well even though the task is familiar to her. All of these factors contribute to or take away from social facilitation, depending on the context.