Norman Triplett

Norman Triplett (October 1, 1861 – 1934) was a psychologist at Indiana University. Triplett was born on a farm near Perry, Illinois in 1861. In 1898, he wrote what is now recognized as the first published study in the field of sport psychology (Strubbe, 2005; though see Stroebe, 2012 for a dissenting argument). His experiment was on the social facilitation effect. Triplett noticed that cyclists tend to have faster times when riding in the presence of a counterpart as opposed to riding alone. He then demonstrated this effect in a controlled, laboratory experiment and concluded that children perform a simple lab task faster in pairs than when performing by themselves. He arranged for 40 children to play a game that involved turning a small fishing reel as quickly as possible. He found that those who played the game in pairs turned the reel faster than those who were alone. Triplett's design involved the creation of two groups (A and B) with the sequence of trials differing for each. The rationale for this design was to eliminate practice and fatigue effects. He concluded that moving from isolation to a group context can reduce our sense of uniqueness, but at the same time it can enhance our ability to perform simple tasks rapidly. Triplett discussed several possible explanations for his findings and concluded that the "bodily presence of another contestant participating simultaneously in the race serves to liberate latent energy not ordinarily available" (Triplett, 1898). Social facilitation has received much attention from social psychologists since Triplett's time, with a number of causal factors implicated, including mere presence, evaluation apprehension, competition, attention, and distraction. Although the phenomenon of social facilitation is now well established, Triplett's original experiment did not produce strong results, at least by modern standards in psychology (Strube, 2005). Triplett did not have the advantage of sophisticated statistical procedures available today and for his study he simply eyeballed the data.