Stage 1- Social Influence Lecture 3 Flashcards
What is social influence?
Attitudes, perceptions, behaviours can be influenced by the real or implied presence of others
What is social facilitation?
How adding a group can affect you, e.g. you perform differently in the presence of others, performance improves
What did Norman Triplett perform?
In 1898 he performed the first social psychology experiment
Norman Triplett experiment?
He observed that cyclists performed worse when put against the clock
In a separate experiment he asked 40 school children to take part in a fishing reel study and found its not just competition/ co-operating- its the mere presence of others- social facilitation
Chen 1937/
Observed ants excavating soil for 4 days
Day 1- alone 2- groups of 2 3- groups of 3 4- alone
Ants excavating quicker in the presence of others- more soil was moved in the presence of others
Zajonc?
Type of tasks contributes to performance outcome
Presence+ easy task= good performance
Presence+ hard task= poor performance
Zajonc theory?
Presence= arousal - evolutionary response- dominant response
Dominant response- facilitates easy tasks - likely to help an easy task, hinder a difficult task
Conclusion of Zajonc?
Social facilitation occurs in simple tasks that require dominant responses
Social interference occurs for complex tasks that require non dominant responses
Cockroach maze?
Two routes in a maze- a simple (straight path) and complex (path with a turn)
Cockroaches were faster together in simple path
Faster alone in complex
Cottrell- evaluation apprehension?
PP learn nonsense words
PP were then asked to guess whether they saw word in recognition task- all words were new
Attentive audiences watching pp affect responses
Markus 1978?
PP asked to get changed before an experiment into lab clothes- then told experiment had been cancelled and asked to remove lab clothes, they were timed how long it took them to undress in both conditions- alone, someone watching, repair man with back turned)
Taking own stuff off- audience/repair/alone
Take lab stuff off- alone/ repair/ audience - quick
Distraction conflict?
Conflict between attending to task and to others who are present
Presence of others?
Tasks are considered a challenge when there are sufficient resources- considered a threat when not
Social loafing?
Individuals contribution to a collective activity cannot be evaluated - work less hard when in a group e.g. if asked to cheer, wont cheer as loud in a group
Karau and Williams?
Loafing depends on how important a person believes their contribution is- men may overestimate value of contribution
