Alec was excited that he made it to the finals in swimming. during training, he strived to improve his time by racing against a set time on the clock. although he couldn't seem to beat his prior record while practicing, he surpassed it easily during the final meet as his friends cheered him on.

based on this information, it is most likely that alec's performance was influenced by

social facilitation                          

Explanation:

Social facilitation: The concept of social facilitation was introduced by Norman Triplett during 1898, and was labelled as 'social facilitation' by the psychologist named Floyd Allport during 1920.

In social psychology, the term social facilitation refers to the phenomenon that people generally perform better or good on a particular task when they are being surrounded by others instead of being alone.

Social facilitation refers to the tendency of a person to facilitate or increase his or her performance in the presence of another person either in a good or a bad way.

In the question above, Alec's performance was influenced by social facilitation.