Having an audience makes your brain perform better
By Ana Sandoiu
Fact checked by Tim Newman
What do you do when you're asked to make a speech or give a presentation? Do you freeze or do you thrive in the spotlight? Most people are afraid of speaking in public because they think having an audience will cause them to "mess up," but a new study shows that, if anything, knowing that you're being watched enhances performance.
Having an audience might make your presentation better, not worse, says a new study.
"According to most studies," says comedian Jerry Seinfeld, "people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death."
"This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy."
This is not just the setup of an otherwise brilliant joke, but also a fact, as attested by a poll of over 2,000 people. Most people are, indeed, more afraid of speaking in public than they are of dying.
If you're one of these people, and you find the fear of failing in public paralyzing, you might be glad to know that, scientifically speaking, being in front of an audience is more likely to make you perform better, not worse.
This is the main takeaway of a recent neuroscientific study that examined the brains of people performing tasks in front of an audience and on their own.
The research was led by Vikram Chib, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, and the findings were published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
Studying performance while being watched
In the past, Chib and his colleagues studied what goes on in the brain when athletes choke under pressure; they found that a brain area called the ventral striatum controls this effect. This region is responsible for processing incentives and rewards, but also for controlling movement.
Given the results of the previous research, the scientists hypothesized that having a social audience would inhibit performance of a certain skill. So, they set out to explore what happens in the brain under the harmful effects of a social audience.
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