People in groups Flashcards
What is social facilitation?
Social facilitation is an improvement in the performance of a task in the presence of others.
E.g., during a pantomime, concert, football game. (Practising at home vs. performing in front of others).
Who was the first to identify the concept of social facilitation?
Norman Triplett (1898) – credited as first social psychology experiment
• He noticed that cyclists went faster when with others than when alone
• The lab experiment he did was how fast children can reel in a fishing line
Independent measures design: alone vs at the same time as another child
They found that children did the task faster when in pairs
This supports the idea that the presence of others facilitates our performance. Triplett argued that the effect is due to a competitive arousal in us.
What did Allport argue about social facilitation?
Allport (1920) – effect not limited to ‘competition’ between individuals, but any mere presence of others.
Allport broadened the idea by arguing it’s not just about being in competition with others and the mere presence of other people produces this effect.
What evidence contradicts social facilitation?
Contradictory evidence – The presence of others can produce reverse effects (social inhibition)
e.g., people falling over on X-factor or on stage even though they’ve practiced many times.
Therefore, people seem to have an influence on our behaviour sometimes in a positive or negative way.
What is Zajonc’s drive theory?
- Zajonc (1965) – physical presence of others increases arousal that can have a debilitating or enhancing effect on performance
- This idea stems from an evolutionary basis, it would be adaptive to have an increased sense of arousal around others. E.g., The presence of predators would increase the arousal in us.
- From an evolutionary basis, there is a general tendency for when we’re around other people to have an increased sense of arousal. This arousal leads to a ‘strengthened dominant response’ which is how well prepared you are for a task. When an individual us well prepared for something, the task is easy. E.g., the task of a lecturer talking in front of students is generally quite easy for them and so the arousal that comes from the students listening should lead to social facilitation making the lecturer perform better.
How does Cottrell’s evaluation apprehension model differ from Zajonc’s drive theory?
- Drive theory – assumes mere presence instinctively produces arousal/drive
- However, the evaluation apprehension model (Cottrell, 1972) suggests that it’s not just the mere presence of others that alters performance, but worry of being judged.
What evidence is there to support Cottrell’s evaluation apprehension model?
- Participants completed a well-learned verbal task
- They completed tasks: alone vs. mere presence (blindfolded) vs. audience (confederates observed participant)
According to the drive theory both the mere presence of the audience blindfolded should produce the same effect as the audience observing the participant. But, according to evaluation apprehension, when people are blindfolded you can’t be worried about being judged because no one is going to see who you were or what you did and wouldn’t produce an effect.
• Only the audience condition produced a social facilitation effect
This is contradictory to the drive theory because according to that theory they should have seen effects when the audience were blindfolded because of their presence.
Therefore, this supports evaluation apprehension because the audience condition only produced an effect when they weren’t blindfolded.
What is Sanders (1981) distraction-conflict theory?
Sanders (1981) – presence of others can drive us to distraction, which produces arousal.
The presence of others divides our attention because individuals have to pay attention to others as well as the task at hand. The attentional conflict increases a sense of arousal because multi-tasking could lead to more pressure. This arousal leads to the strengthened dominant response. It also adds that regardless of the increased arousal drive the presence of others will lead to a decrease in performance. If you are already good at something, the increased arousal will improve your performance. However, if there’s a really difficult task, this theory argues that your attention resources are reduced and the increased arousal will make you perform even worse.
What evidence is there for Sanders (1981) distraction-conflict theory?
Evidence for this theory:
• Participant complete easy/difficult task alone or alongside someone else (this condition could be more distracting)
• Other participant: completes same (i.e., distracting) or different (i.e., not distracting) task
• Distraction condition – improved performance on the easier task, and decreased performance on difficult task. When participants weren’t doing the same task, it wasn’t distracting and there wasn’t a facilitation or inhibition effect.
What are non-drive theory explanations of social facilitation?
Self-awareness theory suggests that very often throughout life, we’re not particularly very self-aware but there are certain situations that elicit a sense of self-awareness. We become aware of our behaviour and sense of self. Self-awareness theory suggests that we have an actual self and an ideal self. Our ideal self Is who we want to be and the actual self is who we think we are right now. The presence of others is one way that causes us to be self-aware (another is looking in a mirror). We become more aware of our behaviour and who we are when we are around other people. It elicits a comparison between who we want to be (ideal self) and who we actually think we are (actual self) and when we become self-aware, we are motivated to reduce the discrepancy.
Explain the theory about self-awareness (Carver & Scheier, 1981).
- Self-awareness (Carver & Scheier, 1981) –presence of others makes us more self-aware. It elicits comparisons between ‘actual’ self and ‘ideal’ self
- We become motivated to reduce the discrepancy
- The magnitude of this discrepancy leads to social inhibition or social facilitation effects
- When discrepancy low (e.g., easy tasks) – performance improves
- When discrepancy high (e.g., difficult tasks) – people give up, performance decreases (after being motivated to reduce the discrepancy, if we do not feel we can overcome the gap between ideal and actual self, it becomes demotivating because)
Explain the theory about self-presentation (Bond, 1982)
- Self-presentation (Bond, 1982) – presence of others leads to impression management tactics – we try to carefully manage who we are and how we behave (e.g., a lot of people are careful of what they post on social media)
- Achievable on easier tasks; difficult tasks induce potential embarrassment which leads to mistakes. When the task is easy, managing our impression is a lot more achievable, however when the task is difficult it induces feelings of worry that you’ll become embarrassed.
What did Ringelmann (1913) find about social loafing?
- Ringelmann (1913) – how effectively people worked within groups
- Participants pulled a rope attached to a dynamometer (measures force)
- Either alone, or in groups of varying size
- Ringelmann effect – individual effort diminished as group size increased
What are the possible explanations for the ringelmann effect?
- Coordination loss – poor coordination of effort reduces ability to meet maximum output (e.g., if people are pulling at different times, they wouldn’t be able to produce their maximum output)
- Motivation loss – people did not try so hard (perhaps because people think someone else will do it, it’s easier to slack off and become lazy)
How did Ingham et al (1974) test the ringellmann effect without the possible loss of coordination.
Ingham et al (1974) – aimed to disentangle the relative effects of coordination and motivation loss
• Pull rope: alone or in groups of varying size
• Groups: actual participants (actually pulling rope vs. confederates (pretending to pull rope)
- Therefore, the participants think that they’re working in a group but only their output is measured.
• Decrease in output in confederate group shows motivational loss of doing the task in a group
