This article reviews the origins and development of social facilitation theory beginning with N. Triplett's (1898) early work in the late 19th century.

Abstract

This article reviews the origins and development of social facilitation theory beginning with N. Triplett’s (1898) early work in the late 19th century. Early studies of the phenomena focused on individual performance enhancement when others were present. Performance impairments were observed but not explained until R.B. Zajonc’s (1965) integration of previous work that provided a coherent explanation for earlier inconsistencies.

Introduction

Social facilitation describes the process in which performance is affected by the presence of others and is studied due to the importance of performance improvement in workplaces, education etc. Within social facilitation are coaction and audience effects.

The term ‘audience effect’ is used to explain the effect of a passive presence on performance and was first observed by Dashiell (1930). He looked at the effect of observation on college students completing multiplication problems, and discovered that whilst more problems were finished, the students tended to make more errors, when problem-solving before an audience. The experimenter observed his participant even in the ‘alone’ condition and this might have impaired results.

Studies then focused on the audience size and status. Porter (1939) asked people who stuttered to read aloud to an audience, finding that participants presented with a larger audience were much more affected, and stuttered more than those with a smaller audience. Cottrell et al. (1968) used a blindfolded audience as his experimental condition so that participants could not be observed and found that the audience effects practically disappeared. The experimenter observed his participant even in the ‘alone’ condition and this might have impaired results. Paulus and Murdock (1971) compared the audience effects shown by student research participants either being observed by an audience of psychology students, or by an audience which contained an ‘expert’. The expert was likely to be able to evaluate the performance/capability of the student and in this condition, results showed stronger audience effects. The experiment did use an unrepresentative sample. Latané and Harkins (1976) asked participants about their own nervousness as they recited poems before audiences, which varied in size and status. Whilst the participants rated themselves on different experiences, the experimenters found that participants rated themselves more nervous when before a larger or higher status audience. These experiments implied that the ability of the audience to evaluate the participant’s performance was important, that both the status and size of the audience made a great difference to the results.

Others studied audience effect variance with task complexity. Cottrell, Rittle and Wack (1967) found that an audience facilitates the memorisation of simple word lists but more complex ones are learnt more slowly. Zajonc, Heingarter and Herman (1969) studied cockroaches and their behaviour when presented with a four-cockroach audience in two situations. In the first, cockroaches ran down a straight runway into a darkened goal area in order to avoid bright light. Here, the audience improved performance. In the second situation, the cockroach escape response was made more complex by requiring a 90O turn to achieve the goal. In this situation, audience impaired cockroaches’ performance. Hunt and Hillery’s (1973) human experiment yielded comparable results in complex and simple mazes, both experiments lacked ecological validity.

From his experiment, Zajonc summarised that social facilitation depends on task complexity and familiarity, saying that, “An audience impairs the acquisition of new responses and facilitates the emission of well-learned responses”. Simple, familiar things are done better when observed, but more complex, unfamiliar tasks are done less well when observed due to an instinctive response to another’s presence and increase in arousal.

Cottrell (1972) rejected this, suggesting the evaluation apprehension model instead. He said that early in life we through another’s evaluation we receive social rewards and punishments (approval, disapproval etc.), so the audience triggers arousal based on ...

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Method

Subjects (N=10) ran 4 shuttles over the length of the gym in the fastest time possible. They carried out these tasks in four different conditions:

Alone (just the timer present)
Coaction (with four other same sex subjects and timer(s) present)
Alone (with a supportive audience and timer present)
Coaction (with a supportive audience, four other same sex subjects and timer(s) present)

Both males and females completed the task.

The times were not made public to either the subjects or the audience.

The audience were instructed to be supportive to all subjects. The audience stood in equal numbers along the tennis court tramlines on both sides of the court.

Times were recorded on a data sheet

Apparatus used:

Five stopwatches (one to measure each subject) these were operated by independent adjudicators (timers)

Five independent adjudicators (timers) who operated stopwatches

Tennis court and audience

Results

Discussion

The various social facilitation theories clearly differ in their explanations for performance effects of social presence. However, they all attempt to explain why in the presence of others simple task performance is enhanced and complex task performance is impaired. This is interesting in light of two points. First, the social facilitation phenomenon that was suggested by Triplett and later named by Allport was not seen in those days as a performance effect moderated by task complexity. It wasn’t until Zajonc (1965) integrated the past half-century of research in his seminal article that task complexity was identified as an important element. No other threads of research appear to have focused beyond the simple-complex task performance paradigm to investigate other dimensions of performance.

Second, research on social loafing has found effects that are generally the reverse of social facilitation (Harkins 1987). Social loafing research is rooted in early studies by Ringelmann, Latané, Williams & Harkins (1979), which began in the 1880’s, even prior to the work of Triplett. These studies found that people exerted less effort and consequently exhibited worse performance when they worked with others on a common task than when they worked on the same task alone now termed the Ringelmann Effect. Early research on social loafing and social facilitation appears to have taken place for the most part in separate domains until the 1980’s. Integrative theoretical efforts by Paulus (1983), Harkins and Geen (1991) suggest that the two topics might both be better served by studying them together.

Jackson and Williams (1985) tested social facilitation and loafing affects together and found effects that suggested the possibility of a consistent explanation for both facilitation and loafing effects. When people performed with co-workers and their performance was individually identifiable, facilitation effects occurred. Simple task performance was better in co-worker conditions than in alone conditions and complex task performance was worse in co-worker conditions than when alone. However, when the group situation removed the potential to identify performance at the individual level, simple task performance was worse than it was for those whose performance was individually identifiable- as predicted by social loafing theory. Furthermore, complex task performance was better for the non-identifiable group. This result suggests the utility of considering social facilitation and social loafing phenomena together. Sanna (1992) provided empirical evidence of a link between these two phenomena in tests of his expectancy-based model.

Social facilitation theories have several problems that weaken their ability to effectively predict and explain the phenomena they seek to address. The boundary conditions for which the theories hold are not yet adequately determined or described. The theories rest on assumptions that are not adequately specified or tested. Some of the constructs and variables are not adequately defined.

The basic idea is that the presence of others leads to at least some physiological arousal. Arousal heightens the probability of performing dominant responses. When a dominant response is correct, the presence of others improves performance. If the dominant response is incorrect, performance can suffer.

More detailed research finds that a key to the physiological arousal that occurs with co-presence, the presence of others is evaluation apprehension, i.e., a social anxiety that occurs when we believe that our behaviour is under scrutiny and faces normative evaluation. Although some arousal may occur with the mere presence of others, it is heightened if some type of evaluation situation is involved. And, with groups of friends, a relaxation response may occur instead. The latter finding suggests one mechanism whereby more interpersonally cohesive groups are less productive: if relationships are too friendly, group members are more relaxed, less motivated to produce (according to the norms of the larger organization), and possibly produce at a lower quantity and quality.

The presence of others thus can improve performance through motivation and when improvement is easy to do. This would include quantity (when it is easy to increase output) on simple or well-structured tasks.

However, what if the situation is new, the task unstructured or complex, requiring a sequence of steps to complete? In that case, both theory and empirical results suggest that individual performance in acquisition tends to suffer in the presence of others (especially on novel tasks). The recommendation is to study, practice, or rehearse alone, then perform in the presence of either co-acting others or an audience, wherein the presence of others will increase arousal, thereby facilitating the performance of well learned responses.

Social facilitation stresses arousal, motivation, or drive. Other theorists in this area suspect more cognitive processes are at work when people perform in the presence of others, such as heightened self-awareness or increased self-monitoring. The increased attention paid to one's performance thus can actually distract individuals from exclusive attention to the task.

Ivan Steiner's social combination theory, in contrast, focuses more on group, rather than individual, productivity. In his view, group performance depends more on whether groups have the resources to succeed and whether groups can combine these resources productively.

The Yerkes-Dodson law demonstrates an relationship between and performance. It dictates that performance increases with cognitive arousal but only to a certain point: when levels of arousal become too high, performance will decrease. A is that there is an optimal level of arousal for a given task.

It is a scientific principal developed by and in and is grounded within the discourses of and .

Graph of Yerkes-Dodson Law

The process is often demonstrated graphically as an inverted U-shaped curve, increasing and then decreasing with higher levels of arousal.

It has been proposed that different tasks may require different levels of arousal. For example, difficult or intellectually demanding tasks may require a lower level of arousal for optimal performance to facilitate concentration, whereas tasks demanding stamina or persistence may be performed better with higher levels or arousal (to increase motivation).

There has been research indicating that the correlation suggested by Yerkes and Dodson exists (such as that of Broadhurst, 1959; Duffy, 1962; Anderson, 1988) but a cause of the correlation has not yet successfully been established (Anderson, Revelle and Lynch, 1989). Despite some evidence existing in contrast to it, the law is generally respected

Easterbrook’s (1959) cue-utilization theory has been widely used to explain the inverted U-shaped relationship, initially established by Yerkes and Dodson, between emotional arousal and performance. The basic tenet of the theory assumes that high levels of arousal lead to restriction of the amount of information to which agents can pay attention. One fundamental derivative of the theory, as typically conceived in psychology, is the assumption that restriction of information or the ability to process a smaller set of data is fundamentally disadvantageous. To explore the merits of this point, it was first argue that the relationship depicted by this collapsed version of the Yerkes-Dodson law is far too simplistic to account for the complex relationship between various cognitive functions and emotional arousal. Second, conceptualisation of arousal as a one-dimensional construct needs to be rejected. Finally, and most importantly, we challenge the notion that having more information available is necessarily preferable to having less information.

References

Allport, F. H. (1924) Social psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Asch, S. E. (1951) Effect of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgements. In H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, leadership and men. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: Carnegie Press.

British Psychological Society (1998) British Psychological Society: Code of conduct, Ethical principles and Guidelines.

Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to authority. New York: Harper and Row.

Triplett, N. (1898) The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9, 507-33competition.

Zajonc, R. B. (1965) Social facilitation. Science, 1429, 269-74.

Bibliography

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Triplett, N. (1898) The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9, 507-33competition.

Zajonc, R. B. (1965) Social facilitation. Science, 1429, 269-74.