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Social Facilitation Studies
Social Facilitation Studies
Social facilitaion
• Triplett (1898)- cycle
Method
- Instructed to wind in a line on a fishing reel as quickly as they could.
- In a practice period, participants performed the task both alone and in
pairs, alternating between the two conditions.
- In each trial, participants were timed to determine how long it took to
make about 150 winds of the reel.
Results
- Performance faster in the presence of another person than when the task
was done alone.
- Participants were 1% faster when working in pairs than alone.
Conclusion
Method
- Participants worked alone in cubicles or sitting together round a table
Results
- with simple tasks such as crossing out certain letters in words-performance
was better in front of other people
- with complicated tasks such as solving complex problems-performance was
better when participants worked alone.
Dashiell (1930) social facilitaion
Results
-number of arithmetic problems performed by participants increased in the
presence of others
- and so did the number of errors made
Results
- participant typed name faster in front of an audience
- to type name backwards = performance better when alone.
Aim
- Test the prediction that the presence o an audience would facilitate dominate
responses and inhibit poorly learned behaviours.
Method
- first part of study: student pool players were observed in a students union
building from a distant
- 12 players were selected: 6 identified as above average , 6 below average
- Second part of study: 4 observers stood round a pool table and observed
players, made their presence known over a number of games.
Results
• below average = potted 25% of their shots when observed compared to 36%
accuracy when not observed- social inhibitation
Conclusion
-Simple mazes are learned faster in the presence of other like animals
-complex mazes are learned faster alone -Zajonc et al 1969.
-In presence of others we are concerned that they are evaluating our performance
(judging)
- on new tasks/complicated tasks , it is done better when done alone than when
there is an audience – due to evaluation apprehension
*Bartis et al 1988 – ELAVUATION APPREHENSION
Aim
- to investigate whether or not evaluation apprehension would lead to
improvement in performance on a simple task and inhabitation of performance
on a complex task.
Method
-participants presented with same basic task, which involved thinking of many
different uses of a knife.
-one group asked to list all different uses of a knife that they could think of
- some participants in each condition were told that their performance would be
identified ( the evaluation apprehension condition)
- other participants in each condition were told that their ideas would be
collected together as a group- but that no individual would be identified.
Results
Conclusion
Method
- Participants presented with either a difficult or simple task t- to perform in the
presence of others
Results
Conclusion
Result
Presence of audience had no effect on children under 8.
Conclusion
Evaluation apprehension may be something that develops with age.
Evaluation
• recent studies have shown that it is arousal alone which explains social
facilitation
• now thought that both arousal and cognitive processes e.g. attention are
involved.
• May be arousal results from cognitive demands e.g. paying attention to both
task and audience -results in – reduced or narrowed attention to the task
• If there is a significant difference between the ideal and the reality – the
person tries to perform to their ideal.- this works on dominant responses not
non-dominant responses.
• After more than 100 years of study, no psychologist have agreed on one
explanation for social facilitation