Social facilitation Flashcards
What is social facilitation?
A tendency for people to perform better in front of other people compared to alone.
When will someones performance decrease in front of people?
If the task is more complex to the person and there is a big crowd.
What is the best example of social facilitation?
Playing sport.
What is the home advantage?
People usually perform better when the people they are performing in front friends and family rather than strangers.
What was Norman Triplett’s experiment?
The first experiment into social facilitation
Observed cyclists performed worse against a clock.
What did Chen study in 1937?
The time it took ants to begin excavating soil.
It took significantly longer when they were alone over being in groups of 2 an 3. In addition they excavated a significantly larger amount of soil when they were with other ants rather than alone.
What is Zajonc’s theory of social facilitation?
Three parts to the explanation:
-Mere presence leads to arousal.
-Arousal will encourage psychological rigidity or inflexibility.
-The dominant response if the task is simple to the person would be to execute the task well.
However is the task is not well learnt it will be executed incorrectly or not as well as usual.
What is it called when the task is performed less well due to it requiring the non dominant response?
Social interference.
What did Cottrell study?
A difficult word task the participant performed in front of an evaluative audience, alone and a blindfolded audience.
What did Cottrell conclude?
That the mere presence of the audience may not be the cause of the arousal as if they are blindfolded or not paying attention there is comparable effects to being alone and undergoing the task.
What did Markus study in 1978?
Asked participants to change into lab clothes and shoes then back into their own clothes, alone, with a repairman in the room (not paying attention) and in front of an attentive audience and timed each thing.
What did Markus find in 1978?
That the normal task of putting on and removing their own clothes was quickly done for the repairman and then even quicker for the attentive audience whereas the new task of putting on the lab clothes got slower for each.
What are the four explanations on why the presence of other may change our behaviour?
- We are aware others may approve or disapprove of our actions.
- A conflict between doing the task and addressing the others present
- Evolutionary explanation of evoking a challenge of threat response.
- Social facilitation and inhibition occur when a persons performance is individually identifiable.
