Even that…I still care about small group 
But it’s not about the pride. When I do small group during practice sessions I’m pretty confident I don’t shoot bystander during dynamic and stressful situation.
“Admit it, we all want range neighbors to look into our lane and see us nailing dimes at 20 yards with ease.”
How often are you admiring your range neighbors targets? If you are like me, then the answer is pretty close to none. So, in reality, your range neighbors are probably not paying much if any attention to your targets. I think its important to focus on your own training.
I personally do a lot of dry fire training at home, both bullseye and moving. When I go to the range I mostly put up multiple targets and vary how many shots in each before moving to the next one. Sometimes I move to the next target right away, sometimes I come back to low ready between target engagements.
Everytime…
I’m never jealous if somebody shoots better groups, but when I see that somebody sucks my heart tells me to shoot that target, make some dead center holes and let the target looks better… 
But seriously… I look at others’ targets to have any idea whom I’m shooting with and what to expect from others’ companion for next hours…
I get that. I am not an instructor, so I pay more attention to how they are handling their firearms than their targets. Although I will say it aggravates me when my targets are set up further away than theirs and their bullets keep punching holes in my targets! 
This has happened many times on the rifle range where my targets are set up at 200 yards and they are 2 lanes over missing their targets at 100 yards so bad they hit mine.
I agree that in a defensive situation you don’t need to shoot all X’s. However, I think you should still try to keep them in the 9 ring on your typical silhouette target. You throw a few into the 8, still good shooting (depending on distance) of course.
I like my small groups. I know my shots may spread during stress, but I can’t train for that stress at the range. I figure but don’t really know that when I need it the shots will spread but not too far from where I trained on the range. A couple of weeks ago, I got to go to a private range that my nephew and a friend had built. Besides having a total blast, I got the chance to shoot at small and large targets spread out about 120 degrees from where I stood. There were lots of 8" and 12" targets with 1 life size target in the middle. Some were about 5 yards ahead of the others at different heights. My last two mags I hit 22 of 24 shots going side to side. Although I don’t have a shot timer, they were a reasonable mid speed. I’m going to have to see if I can wrangle another invitation. A good day I will never forget.
My thought with small groupings in a defensive shoot-out is if all the bullets go through the same hole in your bad guy, you aren’t doing any more damage and therefore not continuing to stop the threat.
Mind you, putting all the bullets through the same hole may be difficult to do if you can’t get him/her they/them to stand still while you shoot.
Putting a few more brain cells to work and remembering my small arms training when I was in the Air Force, the instructors didn’t care if we were tearing the center out of the target as long as we got the correct number of holes in the target. It goes back to a discussion we had on another thread about the military ideology of wounding a solder so he would need to be transported off the battlefield by one or two of his buddies to reduce the number of combatants.
In a self-defense situation against a single, or possibly two or more attackers, I just want to put as many holes as I can in them to stop the threat.
The performance rule is that under stress and uncontrollable situation your performance is going to dwindle. How much it is going to be reduced is all depending upon your stress tolerance level and previous training.
The smaller you make the target the less you will miss but, if you have not trained to aim small and miss small then your muscle memory and your focus will not be attuned to the needed skills to perform with accuracy.
Very practical! 
Happy Anniversary @Todd30
Thank you!
It was a good article and I agree with their argument.
I, like you, do not expect someone to just stand there. To me that is where the accuracy comes in. In a self-defense situation everyone is going to be moving and if you can be accurate with your shots the more holes there will be. There will already be enough variance in shot placement due to stress, but if you are not accurate the variance would probably be larger and cause more misses. At least that is my take on it. Yet to be proved.
Key holing is good just to see what your firearm is capable of but i was always taught to “spread” it out. More nerve damage, more holes. Stops bad guys faster vs 1 hole
Once you make that first hole, those nerve endings are pretty much dead, no use to send more rounds in the same hole.
Ill take a pie plate 3 round target on a human. Its all about equality, spread the wealth. I know my G43 can do better but i want to stop the threat, not get a trophy for tight groups