L8 - Group Productivity

Question 1

What is social facilitation? What study shows this?

Answer 1

• Tendency to perform better in the presence of others than when alone
• Ants/cockroaches dig faster when with others than separately
• Cyclists race faster when competing & children pulled a fishing line faster with others
• The more people that show up = better the performance

Question 2

What is a study that proves and contradicts social facilitation?

Answer 2

• 5 ppts asked to generate arguments separately/groups
• Sep = less arguments = better quality
• Groups = more arguments = lower quality

Question 3

What is social inhibition?

Answer 3

• Tendency to perform worse in the presence of others than when alone

Question 4

How does social fac/inhibition come around?

Answer 4

• Presence of others
• Increase drive of arousal
• Arousal strengthens tendency to perform dominant/well-learnt response
• IF dom is correct = performance improved, if dom is wrong = performance impaired.
• Non-dominance is trying a new activity or not being good at something.

Question 5

What was the study that showed social fac/inhib at the same time?

Answer 5

• Young women hung out at bars & covertly recorded good/bad billiard players
• Would then actively watch them play
• Good players = short accuracy increased and vice versa

Question 6

What are the theories for social fac/inhib? Why are they all true?

Answer 6

• Mere Presence Theory: presence leads to arousal = enhances performance of well learned/simple tasks and causes declines in difficult tasks
• Evaluation Apprehension: Presence leads to assumptions that performacne is being evaluated = inc. arousal
• Distraction Conflict: Presence is distraction = attention divided = conflict/arousal (social animals who recognise people might need us/be a danger)
• All valid, just depends on context

Question 7

What are the other explanations for social fac/inhib?

Answer 7

• Challenge vs threat
• Arousal is not specific: could be cortisol = threatening response = arousal
• Challenge is obstacles to overcome but you have resources to overcome = adrenaline = different form of arousal
• e.g public speaking = stressful, dom response built after a few times

Question 8

What does overarousal lead to?

Answer 8

• Hormones increased e.g testosterone
• Skateboarders attempted harder tricks when attractive women were around

Question 9

What are the different group tasks?

Answer 9

• Additive: Potential/maximum contribution is equal for everyone e.g tug of war
• Conjunctive: Can see who is collaborating to produce an outcome e.g chain is as strong as weakest link. Maximal identifiability = motivates better performance.
• Disjunctive: Part of group with different expertise with a problem to solve. No one person knows all, someone has best solution and know when to let someone have their authority/space

Question 10

What is social loafing?

Answer 10

• Tendency to work less on a collective activity than when alone
• Brain can hide behinds others to perform less
• Rope pulling study: more people in an additive class, the less effort an individual puts in.

Question 11

Why do we do social loafing?

Answer 11

• Valuing group success
• Identifying individuals contribution
• Importance of person’s contribution

Question 12

When is social loafing lower?

Answer 12

• People work with acquaintances than strangers
• Reward for group success is valued or task is challenging (is arousing)

Question 13

What is social compensation?

Answer 13

• Occurs when people exert effort to compensate for others in the group

Question 14

What was the study on social compensation?

Answer 14

• Paired with someone for a game: either they are bad/good at it.
• You know you might have to potentially compensate for it
• When told if it was for fun/serious, important & partner bad = performance improves. Every other situation we perform worse

Question 15

What is the Kohler effect?

Answer 15

• Increased effort comes from the least competent person
• Social compensation involves increased effort from most competent
• Increases performance in teamed exercise
• e.g strong/weak lifting a bar = weak pulls harder to make less apparent as people can see you

Question 16

What were the best criteria for group decision making?

Answer 16

• Used in business for disjunctive tasks
• No criticism of ideas
• Wild ideas are especially valued
• High volume of ideas desired
• Combine & improve ideas later

Question 17

What did the study say about the group decision making idea?

Answer 17

• Found that output of the groups with criteria had weaker ideas than those who worked separately as it takes away the anxiety.