2. Social Facilitation
• An improvement in task performance that occurs when people work in the presence of
other people.
• Coaction- Performing a task or another type of goal-oriented activity in the presence of
one or more other individuals who are performing a similar type of activity
3. • Zajonc’s Resolution
Zajonc’s insight was that the presence of others increases the tendency to perform dominant
responses and decreases the tendency to perform nondominant responses.
If the dominant response is the correct or most appropriate response in a particular situation,
then social facilitation occurs; people will perform better when others are present than when
they are alone.
4.
5.
6.
7. Why Does Social Facilitation Occur?
• Zajonc coined the word compresence to describe the state of responding in the presence
of others. Compresence, he hypothesized, touches off a basic arousal response in most
social species “simply because one never knows, so to speak, what sorts of
responses—perhaps even novel and unique—may be required in the next few seconds”
when others are nearby (Zajonc, 980, p. 50)
8. • Zajonc’s drive theory uniquely predicts that social facilitation will occur even when all
forms of social interaction, communication, and evaluation between the individual and the
observer are blocked.
• Physiological Processes Zajonc’s drive theory suggests that people react, physiologically,
to the presence of people—but the magnitude of this change depends on the type of
situation and on who is watching.
9. • Motivational Processes Psychologist Nickolas Cottrell (1972) suggested that this
evaluative pressure is one of the reasons why people tend to be more productive in the
presence of others.
- His evaluation apprehension theory assumes that most of us have learned through
experience that other people are the source of the rewards and punishments we receive. So
we associate social situations with evaluation and feel apprehensive whenever other
people are nearby.
10. • Sociologist Erving Goffman’s (1959) analysis of self-presentational processes, noted in Chapter
6, also underscores the motivational impact of impression management pressures.
• Self-presentation theory assumes each of us actively controls others’ impressions of us by
displaying social behaviors that establish and maintain a particular social image, or face.
• We do not want others to think that we possess negative, shameful qualities and characteristics,
so we strive to make a good impression.
11. • Attentional Processes When people work in the presence of other people, they must split their
attention between the task they are completing and the other person (Guerin & Innes, 1982).
• The presence of an audience may also increase individuals’ self-awareness, and, as a result, they
may focus their attention on themselves and fail to pay sufficient attention to the task (Mullen &
Baumeister, 1987).
• Distraction–conflict theory suggests that distraction interferes with the attention given to the
task, but that these distractions can be overcome with effort.
12. • Cognitive Processes Social psychologist Stephen Harkins’ (2006) mere-effort model
(or, more precisely, the Threat-Induced Potentiation of Prepotent Reponses model)
suggests that the gains and losses in performance we exhibit when we work on simple and
complex tasks are due, in part, to changes in the way we process information.
• Harkins agrees with other researchers who note that evaluation usually triggers increases
in the effort: when we think we are being evaluated, we work harder.
13. • Personality Processes
Social orientation theory suggests that people differ in their overall orientation toward social
situations, and these individual differences in social orientation predict who will show facilitation in
the presence of others and who will show impairment.
Individuals who display a positive orientation are so self-confident that they react positively to the
challenge the group may throw their way. Others, in contrast, display a negative orientation.
14. Social Loafing
• The reduction of individual effort exerted when people work in groups compared to when
they work alone.
• Ringelmann effect- The tendency, first documented by Max Ringelmann, for people to
become less productive when they work with others; this loss of efficiency increases as
group size increases, but at a gradually decreasing rate
15. Causes of and Cures for Social Loafing
• Increase Identifiability
When people feel that their level of effort cannot be ascertained because the task is collective, social
loafing becomes likely. But when people feel that they are being evaluated, they tend to exert more
effort and their productivity increases.
If the task is an individualistic one and is easy, social facilitation occurs. But when group members
are anonymous and their contributions are unidentifiable, the presence of others reduces evaluation
apprehension, and social loafing becomes more likely (Harkins & Szymanski, 1987, 1988; Jackson
& Latané, 1981).
16. • Minimize Free Riding
free riding—members doing less than their share of the work because others will make up
for their slack
sucker effect- The tendency for members to contribute less to a group endeavor when they
expect that others will think negatively of anyone who works too hard or contributes too
much (considering them to be a “sucker”)
17. • Set Goals
Groups that set clear, challenging goals outperform groups whose members have lost sight of their
objectives (Kleingeld, van Mierlo, & Arends, 2011).
The group’s goals should also be challenging rather than too easily attained. The advantages of
working in a group are lost if the task is so easy that it can be accomplished even if the group loafs,
so care should be taken to set the standards high—but not so high that they are unattainable (Hinsz,
1995; Weldon & Weingart, 1993).
18. • Increase Involvement
Individuals who enjoy competition and working with others in groups are also less likely to
loaf (Stark, Shaw, & Duffy, 2007).
In general, the more engaged people are in the group or the group’s work, the less likely
they will loaf. So long as the competition remains “friendly,” group members may persevere
with much greater intensity when they are vying with others in the group for the best score
(Hinsz, 2005).
19. • Increase Identification with the Group
Social identity theory suggests that the difference between a hardworking group and a
loafing group is the match between the group’s tasks and its members’ self-definitions.
If people are working together but the group and its tasks have no meaning to them, they
care very little if their group succeeds or fails. But when individuals derive their sense of
self and identity from their membership in the group, then social loafing is replaced by
social laboring as members expend extra effort for their group.
20. The Collective Effort Model
• Karau and Williams’s (1993, 2001) collective effort model (CEM) provides a
comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the causes and cures of social
loafing.
• Drawing on classic expectancy-value theories of motivation, they suggested that two
factors determine group members’ level of motivation: their expectations about reaching a
goal and the value of that goal.
