The right dose of motivation

Hi friends!

The Olympics are here (or at least, in Tokyo 😉)! *fanfare plays*

To be completely honest, I haven’t been keeping up with all of the news surrounding sports during the pandemic. But in the last few days, I’ve read up on some of the changes that have been put in place. Like “virtual audiences” at NBA games to make up for the lack of court-side spectatorship. Or fake crowd noises to fill unfamiliar silences at soccer or baseball games. Interesting, right?! It makes you wonder how the lack of in-person support affects athletes’ experiences, especially in high-stakes situations.

In an interview with the Hub at Johns Hopkins University, Professor Vikram Chib (a scholar of motivation and behavior) shared that he “[doesn’t] think [the lack of in-person spectators is] going to make much difference” at the Olympics. But why? It all boils down to expertise and motivation.

🔆 The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Yerkes-Dodson Law (drawn by yours truly)

Cue the Yerkes-Dodson law of social facilitation, which relates “arousal” to “performance” and is visually represented in the graph below. Simply put, we can think of “arousal” as physiological and/or psychological stimulation that is related to motivation and “performance” as how well we carry out a task.

Social facilitation is the idea that having an audience raises arousal, which then improves performance (take a look at the left half of the graph). This may be because having people watch you makes you feel like you’re being evaluated, which motivates you to do better than you would if you were alone. (When I’m filming my “Study With Me” videos, I’m a lot more focused because I know people will be watching me!)

As you can probably imagine, spectators for a sports competition serve as the same type of motivation. If you’ve ever been on the court or in the pool, you’ll know that the cheers of teammates and fans alike is quite useful in motivating you to sink that winning shot or win the last relay.

But, like Prof. Chib says: “The thing about motivation is, it’s like medicine—you want to get the right dose.”

🤔 How much is too much?

Social facilitation only happens when you have the “right dose” (compare the left half of the graph to the right half). For difficult tasks, increasing arousal benefits performance up until a certain point (i.e. the peak). After that point, increased arousal impairs performance, likely due to the stress associated with too much pressure (e.g. If an entire stadium of people is watching you take a test, you might be too nervous to do well). This is known as social inhibition. In contrast, for simple tasks, increased arousal is only associated with increased performance.

Something tells me that in real life, it’s a lot more complex than the graph suggests. For one, Prof. Chib says that the lack of an in-person audience might not be too damaging, since the Olympians are already so experienced and highly trained. (Would this make their sport a “simple” or “difficult” task? Or somewhere in between?)

And also, the audience isn’t the only source of arousal at the Olympics. Beyond social facilitation, there’s the possibility of financial incentives (e.g. endorsement deals) and of course, the honor of winning an Olympic medal. The synergy of these factors makes things a lot more complicated. Only time will tell how things pan out. This year’s Olympics could be an interesting example for social analysis.

Some remaining thoughts:

• Could the lack of an audience be beneficial to the Olympians? Would they be able to focus better without so many potential distractions? Would they be able to recover faster after not doing so well in an event (i.e. by not hearing the groans of an audience)?

• I was watching the 400 IM final in the Tokyo Olympics, and another viewer commented that it was weird to be hearing the splashes of the swimmers rather than the audience’s cheers. That got me thinking: Does the lack of spectators make the Olympics less exciting? Is the audience a part of the show (e.g. kiss cam at baseball games)?

That’s all from me on the Olympics for today. (I’d be interested to hear your ideas!)

🎬 Latest Watches

I’ll admit it. I’m watching Big Time Rush—the Nickelodeon show about the boy band of the same name. I hadn’t really watched it when it first came out over ten years ago because… I don’t know why, actually. Anyway, Netflix has them on, so I’m enjoying the show now! The cartoon-y sound effects the editors add are a nice touch. Also, the members were separated for a while, but they’re having a reunion this year. What a coincidence!

I would sometimes see clips of the show when I scrolled through the channels as a child. The cast members looked so much older than I was. But now I’m the same age as (or possibly older than) they were when they debuted!! Mind = blown.

That’s it for this issue. I hope you enjoy the Olympics (& Big Time Rush). 😝 As always, cheers to being inbox buddies!

❤️ Caroline

P.S. If you have any feedback/comments for me, please reply to this email or contact me on my website: carolinechen.me. I’m always happy to hear your thoughts on content, what you find useful, and what can be improved with some “re-thinking.” :D