Social Facilitation - Coursework Example

Why the Presence of Others Improves Individual Performance in Some Situations but Inhibit It in Others Social Facilitation Introduction Social facilitation is the tendency of people to change their performance due to the mere presence of others (Chiesa & Hobbs, 2008). According to Park and Catrambone (2007), studies on social facilitation investigate how imagined or real presence of people influences an individuals performances. Researchers have studied the theories of social facilitation for several centuries (Guerin, 2010). In 1898, Norman Triplet observed that cyclists cycled faster when they raced as a group rather than when they did so individually (Guerin, 2010). He also noticed that children rolled a fishing reel faster when competing against each other than when doing so against the clock. The study by Norman Triplet indicated that the mere presence of others improved the performance of individuals (Guerin, 2010). However, some other studies have shown that the perceived presence or the actual presence of others can harm the performance of certain individuals in some tasks (Rafaeli & Noy, 2002). Individual performance tends to improve in familiar tasks, while it declines in unfamiliar tasks when they feel they are being watched (Guerin, 2010). This paper will look at various theories of social facilitation in order to determine why the presence of others improves individual performance in some situations, but inhibit it in others. The Drive Theory of Social Facilitation According to the drive theory, human behaviour is influenced by the combination of personality traits and the situation (Lievens, Chasteen, Day, & Christiansen, 2006). According to Lievens, Chasteen, Day, and Christiansen (2006), different situations offer different motivations on the individual that shape the individual’s performance. Robert Zajonc first proposed the drive theory of social facilitation in 1965 (Platania& Moran, 2001). According to Platania and Moran (2001), the presence of an audience tends to cause arousals on the performer making them perform their tasks better. Zajonc proposed that, when people are watching, the performer tends to perform the tasks they have rehearsed in a better way (Lambert, Payne, Jacoby, Shaffer, Chasteen, & Khan, 2003). Platania and Moran (2001) point out that performance decreased when the tasks were complex. Yerkes-Dodson’s law states that individual optimal drive is higher for well-practised tasks, while the same individual’s optimal drive is lower for less practised tasks (Park & Catrambone, 2007). This law seems to support the argument by Zajonc. Platania and Moran (2001) that it is easier to perform simple tasks such as word association when in a group than when alone. On the other hand, Platania and Moran (2001) state that problem-solving tasks are easier to perform alone than when in groups. For this reason, the nature of social facilitation is highly influenced by the difficulty of the task in question. The presence of co-workers or audience promotes well-practised tasks, while it hinders intellectual and problem-solving tasks. According to Platania and Moran (2001), the presence of an audience increases the quantity, while it decreases the quality of work. Zanjoc found that it is not only man that exhibits social facilitation; animals too are affected by the presence of other animals or human beings (Tett & Burnett, 2003). He found that ants built an anthill faster when working in a group than when working singly. He also found that an individual cockroach ran through a simple maze slower when alone than when there were other cockroaches. According to the findings by Zanjoc, when the maze was made a bit more complex, cockroaches in groups ran slower than when one cockroach ran alone. For this reason, when an organism expects negative feedback, the performance declines in the presence of others. On the other hand, when the organism expects a positive feedback, its performance improves in the presence of others. Evaluation theory The presence of others can create a sense of a possible negative or positive evaluation of someone’s performances (Feinberg & Aiello, 2006). According to Aiello and Douthitt (2001), the fear of failure in front of observers can make an individual to improve their performance. In the case of cyclists, observed by Triplet, the presence of competing cyclists created a feeling of arousal that led to competitive performance(Strauss, 2002) Even when the cycling is not competitive, the mere presence of other cyclists made individual cyclists fear evaluation leading to improved performance. The fear of appearing as a loser is a potential motivation in sports when there is an audience (Strauss, 2002). Rockloff and Dyer (2007) investigated how the presence of an audience affected the behaviour of 116 gamblers. Rockloff and Dyer (2007) set out an experiment to measure how the nature of feedback from a computer gambling game affected the gambling behaviours of the players. They found that gamblers who received alerts that other players (opponents) were winning, placed more bets despite numerous losses. According to Rockloff and Dyer (2007), the fear of appearing losers made the gamblers to risk more bets. This finding by Rockloff and Dyer (2007) supports the hypothesis by Zanjoc that the mere presence of observers, even if they cannot evaluate the performance of the individual, affects the individual’s performance. The use of primitive animals such as cockroaches by Zanjoc suggests that the fear of evaluation was not the only factor that affected the animal behaviours in presence of others. According to Rockloff and Dyer (2007), cockroaches lack the cognitive intelligence to fear evaluation. Positive self-image Theories Some researchers attribute the need to give a positive self-image as one of the reasons for the change in performance in the mere presence of others. People like appearing more competent when in front of their peers. When the task is simple, the individual is likely to perform it extremely well in front of people. However, when the task is complex, they will undertake it carefully in the fear that they may portray themselves as incompetent. The fear of being seen as incompetent makes them perform poorly in difficult tasks. The need to create a positive image is different from the fear of being evaluated. According to Rockloff and Dyer (2007), creating a positive image is the need to appeal to the eyes of the onlookers. The need to appeal in front of the peers occurs naturally in human beings as well as in animals. In the experiment conducted by Rockloff and Dyer (2007), the gamblers may have been pushed to bet more by their desires to demonstrate their superior luck to their peers. Since placing a bet in a gambling can be assumed to be a very simple task, the increased performance supports the argument by Zajonc that presence of an audience improves performance of simple tasks. If the task were unfamiliar, we would have expected decline in performance in the presence of observers. Attention theories The presence of attention from others can influence the performance of an individual even without the fear of evaluation. Attention can create cognitive overload on the performer leading to distraction from their actual performance (Muller, Atzeni, & Butera, 2004). According to Muller, Atzeni, and Butera (2004), lack of focus on the task at hand can lead to diminished output by the performer. The observers can be in the form of co-workers or audience. The level of distraction or perceived distraction can improve or impede the performance of the individual. According to overload hypothesis, the presence of other people acts as a distraction that leads to cognitive overload. In cognitive overload status, individuals tend to perform simple tasks faster, while they are slower in complex tasks. According to Rockloff and Dyer (2007), performance on simple tasks improves because individuals tend to focus more on the main stimuli when there are distractions. Complex tasks have numerous stimuli that require concentration. In the presence of distracters, the focus of the individual is shifted from the tasks to the distracters, leading to poor performance. According to the feedback loop model, people tend to focus on themselves when they know they are being observed. When people become aware of the presence of the observer, they feel the need to perform according to the expectations of their observers. This increased awareness makes them perform their task better than when there are no observers.The capacity theory of social facilitation suggests that individuals perform simple instructions better when in front of an audience than when alone. On the contrary, individuals are poor in performing complex instructions when people are watching. The presence of people attracts some of the attention required to solve complex instructions, leading to poor performance. Other Theories According to prospect theory, individuals tend to be risk averse when there are potential gains, and risk seeking when there are potential losses to watch out (Gray & Heatherington, 2003). Rockloff and Dyer (2007) used this theory to explain why people were willing to receive a small amount of money for sure bets than a huge amount of risky bets. People will also go for possibilities of large uncertain losses than go for small sure losses. More importantly, people make their decisions based on the possible gains and losses in relations to other people. When other people are gaining, an individual is likely to perceive their small losses to be huge. According to social learning theory, the presence of other people performing a certain activity acts as stimuli for a person to perform a similar activity. An individual is likely to adopt such similar behaviour if those around him are behaving in a similar way. On the contrary, if the people around the person detest the behaviour or show no interest, a person is likely to lack motivation to continue performing it. The presence of a partner in a successful activity acts as a motivator to the person performing the activity. Conclusion Social facilitation is a natural phenomenon that occurs in every social setting. Many people perform well or poorly depending on the complexity of the task and the surrounding environment. The effects of social facilitation have been observed in human as well as in animals (Amici, Aureli, & Call, 2014). Norman Triplet initiated the debate on social facilitation when he observed differences in individual performances when there are other people watching and when alone. Researchers and social psychologists seem to differ on the causes of the social facilitation tendencies. Some researchers argue that social facilitation results from the mere presence of others, while other researchers have argued that it is the perception of being evaluated that lead to the changes in performances. The researchers have supported their argument on the mere presence based on the fact that even primitive animals such as cockroaches respond to social facilitation. Cockroaches do not have the cognitive ability to perceive evaluation. On the other hand, improvement in individual performances in the presence of people has been attributed to the fear of being evaluated. These differences among the researchers and social psychologists have led to social facilitation theories such as the drive theory, evaluation theory, attention theory, and positive image theory. Despite these differences, the consensus is that individuals perform different when alone and when there are other people. The differences in performance have also varied depending on the complexity of tasks. References Aiello, J. R., & Douthitt, E. A. (2001). Social facilitation from Triplett to electronic performance monitoring. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 5(3), 163-180. Amici, F., Aureli, F., & Call, J. (2014). Response facilitation in the four great apes: is there a role for empathy? Primates, 55(1), 113-118. Chiesa, M., & Hobbs, S. (2008). 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