Social facilitation is a psychological concept that refers to the tendency for the presence of others to improve an individuals performance on a task. It can be defined as an increase in response from the sight or sound of others making the same movement. Social facilitation can occur through the real, imagined, or implied presence of others. There are two types of social facilitation: co-action effects and audience effects. Co-action effects occur when the presence of others doing the same task causes an increase in ones performance, while audience effects occur when the presence of others who are not performing the same task causes an increase in ones performance.

The concept of social facilitation was first identified by Norman Triplett in 1898 when he noticed that cyclists performance was facilitated when training as a group. Psychologist Floyd Allport labeled it social facilitation in 1920. However, social facilitations definition and explanations are not without controversy. Social psychologists first debated whether social facilitation in humans can be through mere presence or whether it must be through evaluation. It was concluded that although the influence of the mere presence of others can be easily concealed by many other complex social factors, it is one of the variables that contributes to the power of others to influence an individuals performance.

Whether or not social facilitation occurs depends on the type of task. People tend to experience social facilitation when they are familiar with a task or for well-learned skills. However, social inhibition (decreased performance in the presence of others) occurs for difficult or novel tasks. Social facilitation is not limited to humans; it also occurs in animals when the performance of a behavior by an animal increases the probability of other animals also engaging in that behavior or increasing the intensity of the behavior.