ABSTRACT
After capturing his seventh consecutive Tour de France championship, Lance Armstrong was lauded for his competitive greatness and for his passion and motivation for his sport. Long before Armstrong crossed the finish line (and even before the firstTour de France),NormanTriplett enjoyed watching cyclistsbattle for glory. He observed that the same bicycle racers rode faster when racing against other cyclists than in timed trials, and raised a question that goes straight to the heart of social psychology, as defined by Allport (1985): How is an individual influenced by the real, imagined, or implied presence of others? Triplett was interested in a more specific version of this question, regarding the effect of interpersonal competition on performance. He designed a clever study to test his ideas in a controlled laboratory setting, and is generally credited as having conducted the first social psychology experiment (Triplett, 1898). We see from the beginning an emphasis on real-world observation paired with experimental studies, and this typifies the Lewinianapproach(Lewin,1935) thathasguided social psychologyover the years.
