Social Influence: Social Facilitation

Majority Influence

Social Facilitation Effects

• Early studies in social facilitation sought to understand why people performed betterwhen in competition with others

Norman Triplett (1898)

• Cyclists rode faster when racing together than when alone.

• He believed it was competition causing this effect

To test his idea

• Children to turn a fishing reel 150 times

• Some alone, some in competition

• Children worked faster in the competition condition

• These days it would not be considered social facilitation because competition is viewed as a separate issue

• His work overall was important because he distinguished between people working together and alone

• He said that they improve their performance to impress others

Allport

• Series of four studies published in 1920

• He thought that competition should be viewed as a separate phenomenon so he instructed his participants not to compete with each other

Considered the founder of Social

Psychology!!!

His studies

• Study 1: only three participants!!!

• Method: participants were given sheets of ruled paper for writing 100 words. They were tested for one hour each week for three months. Each week the social conditions changed (alone or together)

• Their task was to read the word at the top of the page and to write as many free-associations as possible

Results

Participant Alone Together % Gains

Bar 4.3 3.9 Gain together 9.3

Stu 5.8 5.0 Gain together 13.8

Lan 3.3 3.4 Gain alone 3

Average 4.4 4.1

Average time score for free association words (minutes)

Average amount of associations each minute

19

19.5

20

20.5

21

21.5

22

22.5

23

Minute 1 Minute 2 Minute 3

Together

Alone

Study 1V

• Wanted to see whether social influence would affect intellectual functions involved with reasoning

• Participants were read a short passage and then asked to write all the arguments, as many and as strong as possible, which they could think of to disprove the point made in the passage given.

• Alone and together condition

• In the together condition they were told they were all writing on the same statement.

• Participants were given 5 minutes for each test.

• Nine subjects were used.

• There were 20 ‘together’, and 20 ‘alone’ tests (40 in total) over two months.

Results

• 1 of the 9 participants had the same results (words written) for both alone and together conditions

• The other 8 had higher scores (words written) when working in a group

• 6 out of the 9 had a higher percentage of superior ideas when working alone

• So overall, more ideas in group but better ideas alone

Some conclusions from Allport (1920)

1. Quantitative gains (speed) but varied from 66% -93%

2. Task type matters and causes variations in gains

3. Individual differences (nervous and excitable people may be distracted more by others) whilst slow individuals benefit more from group work

4. Temporal – gains are usually seen in the first few minutes of the tests

His explanations

Facilitating factors:

1. Presence of others (although he did not have a mere presence condition)

2. Rivalry instinct (although he had told them not to compete)

Inhibiting factors:

1. Distraction, over-rivalry, emotions

Evaluation

Bad points:

• He did not test to see whether this experiment was statistically significant

• He had a very small sample sizes

• He assumed that his participants were not competing

• No passive audience condition

Good points

• Allport however was the first to look at qualitative differences (argument types)

• Allport also noted negative effects from co-action

Chen (1937)

• Ants digging in groups have been found to dig more than three times as much sand per ant than when alone

• Again, only co-action – no passive viewers!

Explanations of Social Facilitation

• Guerin (1993): proposed three types of explanations for social facilitation

1. Drive-Arousal theory

2. Evaluation Apprehension theory

3. Cognitive distraction theory

Zajonc: Drive-Arousal Theory

• Zajonc said that arousal acts as a drive to bring about a ‘dominant response’

• Taken from Hull (1943) [habit strength x drive]

• Dominant or ‘correct’ responses are those that are very well learned, or instinctive

• Dominant or correct responses improve as the subject’s drive increases (Spence-Hull, 1956)

Past Evidence

• In animal studies: eating, drinking, exploring, nest-building, and running (all correct responses) increased with social stimulation

• Gates and Allee (1933) - cockroaches were worse at escaping a maze (not well practiced) when other types of stimulation (drives) were activated (e.g. food/water)

Pessin and Husband (1993) – ‘Effects of social

stimulation on human maze learning’

• This study showed that people were worse at learning mazes when in groups, than when they were on their own

• Social stimulation (others) caused arousal which in turn acted as a drive. Mazes are not well practiced therefore worse performance

Social Stimulation

• Zajonc reasoned that if social stimulation caused arousal, which in turn acted as a drive, then the mere presence of others should sufficient to elicit a dominant response: the ‘mere presence effect’

Zajonc et al.’s Famous Study (1969)

Zajonc et al. (1969): Arousal-drive and Mere presence

• Maze and runway performance of cockroaches was observed under solitary and social conditions

We’re watching

you!!!

Arousal-drive (Zajonc)

Results

• Maze performance (not well practiced) was impaired in the presence of other cockroaches (social stimulation)

• Runway performance (easy task) was enhanced in the presence of other cockroaches (social stimulation)

Social facilitation

Social Inhibition

Arousal-drive (Zajonc)

When others are present we become

aroused

The effect from arousal depends on the habit strength

Difficult or un-practiced

= social inhibition

Easy or practiced =

social facilitation

Michaels et al (1982)

• IV1: Average and below average pool players

• IV2: Presence or absence of audience

Results

• Average increased their shot accuracy by 9% when being watched (compared with alone)

• Below average decreased their shot accuracy by 11% when being watched (compared with alone)

Evaluation

• Good ecological validity

• No alone condition

• Did not know they were in a study so less demand characteristics

• Ethical issues???

Evaluation of Mere Presence Theory

• Cannot explain why some competent people still perform badly in front of an audience

• Also some difficulty in measuring habit strength (or practice)

• Some people learn quicker with less practice.

Social Conformity: Evaluation-Apprehension Theories

• Feelings of being evaluated causes arousal, and therefore brings about a dominant response

Social conformity and objective self-awareness

• Performing in front of an audience makes people objectively aware of themselves

• Attention is focussed inwardly and they become worried about how others see them

• This leads to arousal and aversive feelings when we fear falling short of our goals

• This makes us try harder

• Two possible outcomes: for simple tasks we end up doing better; for difficult tasks we perform poorly

• This can account for the reduction of social facilitation (or inhibition) when an audience is blind-folded (Cottrell et al., 1968)

Social Conformity: Evaluation Apprehension

• Dashiell (1930) distinguished between

• Quiet audience

• Overt vocal attitudes from observers (evaluative)

• Co-working without competition

• Explicit rivalry and competition

• Three different tasks

• Overtly vocal and rivalry condition groups were fastest, but also made more mistakes

Wicklund and Duval (1971)

• If audiences have their effect by causing a shift to objective self-awareness then a mirror should cause the same effect

• These authors instructed participants to copy German prose from a story

• Condition 1 performed the second passage in front of a mirror

• Condition 2 had no mirror

Results

• Mirror condition: increase of 43.33 words from first to second passages

• Non-mirror condition: increase of 17.65 words from first to second passages

• Supports the idea that objective self-awareness can cause arousal thereby causing a dominant response

Evaluation Apprehension: Henchy and Glass (1968)

1) Alone

2) Expert together

3) Non-expert together

4) Alone recorded

• If evaluation apprehension causes arousal then conditions 2 and 4 should be affected because of perceived evaluation apprehension!

• Experimenter pronounced fake words via an intercommunication system immediately after projecting each on the screen.

• The subject was instructed to repeat it once.

• Learning measured at different training frequencies

• Cottrell built on Zajonc’s drive-arousal theory by adding that the correctness of ‘dominant response’ only plays a role in social facilitation when there is an expectation of social reward or punishment based on performance.

Results

• The dominant response only occurred in conditions 2 and 4 and switched from inhibition to facilitation after 8 training sessions

• Support for evaluation apprehension because only these two conditions involved expert evaluations

Evaluation Apprehension: Cottrell et al. (1968)

• Similar task (word recognition) tested after different amount of learning trials

• Three conditions: alone, audience, mere presence (blindfolded audience)

• Only the audience condition resulted in a dominant response, again, around 10 learning trials

Conclusion

These findings argue against Zajonc’s mere presence effect of social facilitation “drive effects upon individual performance will not occur unless the others present are either spectators or co-actors.” (Cottrell et al., 1968, p 250)

Taken from Cottrell et al. (1968, p 247)

Task: to learn

nonsense words

Evaluation of Social Conformity and Evaluation Apprehension Theories

• This theory does not explain social facilitation in animals that presumably do not experience evaluation apprehension

• Evaluation apprehension may be one of many causes of social facilitation or social inhibition

• Also contradicts Yerkes Dodson Law

Cognitive: Distraction-Conflict Theory

• Arousal model based on cognitive conflict

• Attention needs to be divided between the audience and the task

• This leads to conflict therefore it makes the same predications as the drive arousal models

• Facilitation on easy tasks; inhibition on difficult tasks

Distraction-Conflict Theory

• Sanders et al. (1978) page 131 of your text book

Huguet, Galvaing, Monteil, & Dumas (1999).

Participants were then faced with the Stroop task either alone or in presence of an inattentive-busy (reading), invisible (sat behind the participant), or attentive (watching) audience (a same-sex confederate).

Audience effect

Co-action effect

Evaluation

• Distraction difficult to ascertain – e.g. Would you be equally distracted by different people?

• Also, studies tend to rely on participants’ self-report about how distracted they were

• Also, does it occur because of monitoring others, competition, mere presence?