Social Facilitation

 The tendency for people to do better on simple tasks and worse on complex tasks when 1) they
are in the presence of others, and 2) their individual performance can be evaluated
 How does it work?
o The presence of others creates physiological arousal
 Others = members of one’s own species
o Increased arousal enhances an individual’s dominant response
 Dominant = reaction most accessible, elicited most quickly, easily
o Quality of performance varies with type of task
 Easy task: dominant response is typically correct
 Hard task: dominant response is typically incorrect
 What about the presece of others that increases arousal?
o Mere presence theory – the mere presence of others is sufficient to eliicit social
facilitation effects
o Evaluation Apprehension Theory – Social facilitation occurs when others are seen as
potential evaluators
 Markus (1978)
o Participants did tasks...
 Easy: take off socks and shoes
 Hard: put on lab equipment
o Under different conditions:
 Alone
 Mere presence: Repairman working in room with back to the participant
 Potential evaluation: experimenter watching attentively
o Turns out
 It’s both!!!!!!

Social Loafing

 The tendency for people to exert less effort when working on a group task in which individual
contributions cannot be monitored
o Experiment 1
 Goal/purpose?
 Method?
 Results?
o Experiment 2
 Goal/purpose?
 Method?
 Results?

Overall...

 Social facilitation
o Happens when an individual is working towards an individual goal
o Happens when an individual’s performance is visible, there's a spotlight on them
  Social loafing
o Happens when group members work together towards a shared goal
o Happens when individuals' performances get lost in the group performance

Polarization

 Common sense tells us that when groups work together to make a decision, they compromise
and choose a middle-of-the-road decision
o Often referred to as depolarization
o Occurs when group opinions are evenly split
 But an even division of opinion is rare, so what happens when groups aren’t split
 Group polarization – the process by which a group’s initial average posiition becomes more
extreme following group interaction
 Myers & Kaplan
o Participants were in simulated jury situations
o Read about traffic cases with a high-likelihood of guilt and a low-likelihood of guilt
o Manipulated discussion
 Participants discussed their guilt judgments in ½ of the cases
 Some cases weren’t discussed
 How does polarization come about
o Processing reasons
 Those processing superficially (I.e., low elaboration)
 Use group consensus as a heuristic – believe that if a majority of people
hold an opinion, it must be correct
 Those processing systematically (I.e., high elaboration):
 Consider the arguments thoughtfully, but arguments in favor of the
majority opinion are more numerous, get more discussion

Ostracism: The general process of exclusion and rejection