Men And Women React Differently To A Missing Audience

Men and women react differently to a missing audience without an audience, men run slower and women faster. The lack of spectators during the coronavirus pandemic appears to have had a noticeable effect on the performance of athletes at the 2020 Biathlon World Cup, a new study shows. According to the new analysis, women also performed better in complex tasks, such as shooting, when an audience was present while men did not.

The lack of spectators during the coronavirus pandemic appears to have had a noticeable effect on the performance of athletes at the 2020 Biathlon World Cup, a new study by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) in Psychology of Sport and Exercise shows. According to the new analysis, women also performed better in complex tasks, such as shooting, when an audience was present while men did not.

Social facilitation theory states that a person’s performance is impacted if other people watch them. The mere presence of an audience improves the performance of simple tasks, especially those that require stamina.

“The studies have been relatively clear so far, but the results are more heterogeneous when it comes to more complex coordinative tasks,” said Amelie Heinrich from the Institute of Sports Science at MLU. In general, it is assumed that performance tends to deteriorate when there is an audience.

Heinrich is a sports psychology expert who coaches Germany’s junior biathlon squad. In her new study she took advantage of the special situation in sport caused by the coronavirus.

“The pandemic offers a unique opportunity to study an audience’s influence outside of experimental conditions in the real world,” she said.

She compared the running times and shooting successes of male and female biathletes from the 2018/2019 season with their performances in the 2020 season in the sprint and mass start events.

“The men’s results were as expected: they ran faster with an audience present, but performed more poorly in shooting,” says Heinrich.

While cross-country skiing mainly requires stamina, shooting is a coordinative task.

It was the other way around for women. They ran slower in the presence of spectators, but on average, it took them an entire second less to make their shot and, at least in the sprint, their scoring performance was five per cent higher.

The researchers believe the results are not only due to a fluctuation in the athletes’ performance.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time that a study was able to show a different effect of the audience on men and women,” says Professor Oliver Stoll, head of the sports psychology section at MLU.

Most of the previous studies on the topic have been conducted with men mostly.

“Our study raises questions about the generalisability of the social facilitation theory and indicates there might be a previously unknown difference between men and women,” said Heinrich.

This should be investigated more thoroughly in further studies for other sports that also contain both stamina-related and coordination-related elements.

“It is possible that gender-specific stereotypes play a role,” she added.

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