Lecture 7 - Unconscious Bias and Stereotype Threat

Question 1

social facilitation

Answer 1

• an example of how adding a group/person can affect your performance
• seen across species
• Chen (1937) - observed ants excavating soil for 4 days. ants took longer before they started working when they were alone vs in group. worked harder and moved more soil in groups.
• humans more complex. may depend on task (zajonc 1965)
  > easy/good at task = watching you perform makes you better
  > difficult/unknown = worse performance when being watched due to pressure

Question 2

zajonc’s theory and yerkes-dodson law

Answer 2

• how arousal affects performance. Zajonc 3 parts as to why it matters if a task is new or well-learned:
  1. mere presence leads to arousal - evolutionary response. under pressure go back to core things you know well
  2. arousal causes psychological rigidity or inflexibility. arousal will encourage the dominant response
  3. dominant response facilitates well-learnt or easy tasks as likely to be correct.
• social facilitation occurs on simple tasks that require dominant response and improves performance
• social interference occurs for complex tasks that require non-dominant responses and worsen performance.
• linked to yerkes-dodson law. some arousal is good and improves performance but too much inhibits our ability if we cannot go on autopilot.
• high arousal improves simple or well-learned tasks but worsens complex or poorly learned task

Question 3

is it mere presence?

Answer 3

• humans are more self aware.
• need to:
  1. test someone alone on a hard/not learned task and measure response type
  2. test someone in front of an attentive audience and measure response type
  3. test someone in front of a non-attentive audience and measure response type.