Audience Effect

A man rehearsing a speech alone in his kitchen is fluent. Give him twelve listeners and he forgets his own name. Or the opposite — the sprinter who never broke ten seconds in training does it the day the stands are full.

Both are the same law: being watched changes performance. The presence of others pours fuel on the fire. If the task is simple and well-learned, the extra fire makes it blaze. If the task is delicate and half-learned, the fire burns it.

So the effect is not "audiences help" or "audiences harm." Audiences amplify. They strengthen whatever is already there — the prepared or the unprepared.

Use this before any public test. If the material is yours only superficially, practice it until it is boring, because the audience will multiply whatever you bring. Watchers do not give you new qualities. They give your old ones a megaphone.