Social Facilitation and Social Loafing

Vocabulary flashcards covering social group dynamics including social loafing, social facilitation, and groupthink as described in the lecture.

Social Groups

The basic parts of human life that provide security, companionship, values, and norms.

Primary Groups

Social groups consisting of family and friends.

Secondary Groups

Social groups that exist at work or school.

Groupthink

A negative consequence of group work where members make faulty or ineffective decisions for the sake of avoiding conflict and reaching a consensus.

Social Loafing

The tendency for people to exert less effort to achieve a goal when they are in a group compared to when they are alone.

Sucker Effect

A reason for social loafing where individuals wait to see how much effort others will put in first to avoid being left with all the work.

Free-rider Effect

The tendency of people to reduce their efforts when they believe it will not affect the final performance of the group whatsoever.

Social Facilitation

The phenomenon where the presence of others affects performance, typically enhancing it on simple/well-learned tasks and impairing it on complex/difficult tasks.

Norman Triplett

The researcher who conducted the first study on social facilitation, finding that cyclists had faster times when cycling in groups.

Joseph Pessin

The researcher who found that the presence of others had a negative effect on complex cognitive skills, such as memorizing a list of nonsense words.