Controls
I will be controlling whether or not an audience is present or not. The groups will be told the same thing and the task will be carried out in the same room.
Measuring variables
The task will be timed therefore a time will be recorded. I will make sure the time is recorded accurately by the computer to the nearest second
Test
I will be using the Mann-Whitney test. I have chosen this test because it tests for the difference in two conditions. The data can also be converted to ordinal data there- for can be evaluated easily.
Ethics
I will debrief each participant after they have completed the task and answer any questions they might have.
Background
I chose to research the effects of social facilitation because I’ve always wondered how and why the presence of people can affect your performance when carrying out tasks especially in the area of sports.
Social facilitation is a term used for the presence of others can increase arousal and therefore enhance dominant responses.
Previous Research
Zajonc’s drive theory of social facilitation. As we have seen the presence of others, especially when they are paying close attention to our performance as an interested audience, does seem to increase the feelings of arousal. Zajonc put forward a theory to explain this: First the arousal increases dominant responses. Second is the response can either be correct or incorrect. Also if it is found that the people are skilled in the task they will perform better than people less skilled.
In his study people were asked to pronounce words between one and sixteen times, some of the words were more “dominant” than others, and these were said to be pronounced more frequently. The speed at which the words were shown was increased some going at even a hundredth of a second, so they had to guess the word.
The results found that if a audience was present participants were more likely to guess “dominant” words
Allport asked participants to write down as many associations as they could think of for words printed on the top of an otherwise blank piece of paper, (e.g. “building”, “”laboratory”) They were allowed to work for three one minute periods and performed alone and in front of two other persons. Results were quite clear : 93% of the participants produced more associations when working in the presence of others than working alone.
Zajonc also trained cockroaches to run towards a light in a clear lucite t-maze. An "audience box" was located beneath the t-maze where the 'roach marathoners could see, and presumably smell, their colleagues. 'Roaches ran their t-mazes faster and more accurately with an audience of their fellow 'roaches than when no audience was present.
Results
You can see from the statistical tests I carried out that the mean, median and mode values of group 1 were considerably lower than those of group 2. The standard deviation shows that the values in group 1 were closer to the mean than those of group 2, but the range shows there was a greater variation in the values I got in group 1 than group 2.
My final result value was 28
My critical value was 27
Level of significance was p < (0.05)
The critical value for a 1 tailed test where p < (0.05) is 27, my result was 28 therefore the result is not significant and the null hypothesis is upheld.
You can clearly see from these graphs that there is an obvious difference in the time taken by the group with an audience present and the one without an audience present, this being the total times for the audience present being low.
Discussion
My results show that even though they were insignificant there was a clear difference in the times in each condition, and that the people carrying out the task in front of an audience were more likely to score a lower time than that of the group doing the task alone. The fact that the critical value was not reached could be due to the fact that the test was more based on peoples computer skills than that of the effect of social facilitation.
This means that my null hypothesis was upheld. There were a few problems with my experiment which I could have changed. Even though I had used the same room to carry out each test it was impossible to keep everything the same inside the room, e.g. temperature and noise level. My design and procedure could also have been changed so that the same people who carried out the task could go on to do the second task in front of the audience and see if there scores changed because of this.
There were no ethical issues brought up as all participants were debriefed after they had carried out the experiment, although the participants may have felt a bit embarrassed if they had scored a low score in front of the audience.
I could also not control the mood of the audience, for example when some people were doing well in the task they were cheering but when people were doing not so well they were not so vocal.
My results have found that the effect of social facilitation can increase the performance of people when carrying out tasks as mentioned in Zajonc’s and Allport’s work, but it cannot always be applied to everyday tasks as a persons individual skill at that task to just pure luck can also take effect of the outcome.
I could modify my experiment so that I could have the same people carrying out the 2 conditions, I could have also chosen a different task which was not demanding on computer skills. I can also vary the size of the sample I used as it would give me more data to analyse and give more confounding results. I could also use a wider age of people to see if the effect of social facilitation has greater or lower effect on older people’s ability to carry out tasks.
References
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THEORIES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY -
- Barron and Bryne – Social Psychology p.446
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Floyd Henry Allport and the Social Psychology -
Appendices
Ranking Total Ra = 78 Rb = 127
Mann-Whitney
U a = Na Nb + Na (Na + 1) - Ra
2
U a = 100 +110 - Ra
2
U a = 155 – 78
U a = 77
U b = 155 – 127
U b = 28
Mean = ∑x = 1093/10 = 109.3
2
= 1219/10 = 122
Standard Deviation = ∑x2 = 153.79/11 = 13.892
(n-1)
= 153.63/11 = 13.967