The social facilitation of performance, engagement and affect in a complex videogame: Opponent identity

Copyright © 2019, IGI Global. The objective of this study is to analyze the social facilitation of performance, intrinsic engagement, state hostility, and targeted affects in a computer-based driving game where social actors are competitors. This is a quasi-experimental study with 97 Gulf Arab women. Social facilitation of absolute performance does not take place while it does for relative performance. There is no difference in state hostility based on social facilitation, but there is in targeted affect. Intrinsic engagement and extrinsic motivation are both facilitated by human opponents. There is a negative relationship between intrinsic engagement and state hostility across conditions. There is evidence that the experience of playing a game character and playing a person is substantially different. The two most powerful predictors of performance and affect are intrinsic engagement and videogame interest when playing a person. Weekly hours of console play are added to those two when playing a game character