In 2008, college students were given a list of words and told to copy them as quickly as they could. The "easy task" was to write out one list with their dominant hand and the "hard task" was to write out another list with their nondominant hand. While completing the task, they were in the presence of an image of their favorite television personality (displayed on a computer screen) or an image of another character from the same show. When given the easy task, they wrote more words in the presence of their favorite character and when given the hard task, the favorite character inhibited their performance. As shown, while the college students were given tasks, their favorite television characters are perceived as "real" in a social facilitation paradigm which gives evidence as to how social facilitation can affect performance.