Chapter 9: Social Facilitation

Why do people join groups?

- a source of information (informational influence)
- helps us form an identity
- establishes social norms and rules (social influence)

What is social roles?

shared expectations in a group about how particular people are supposed to behave
- shared expectations about how people in the group are supposed to behave

What is a group?

2 or more people who interact and are interdependent in the sense that their needs and goals cause them to influence each other

What is group cohesiveness?

qualities of a group that bind members together and promote liking between them
- how tightly-knit & bonded group members are

What is social facilitation?

when people are in the presence of others and their individual performance can be evaluated, the tendency to perform better on simple tasks and worse on complex tasks

What is social loafing?

when people are in the presence of others and their individual performance cannot be evaluated, the tendency to perform worse on simple of unimportant tasks but better on complex or important tasks
- a person slacks on easy tasks when group member contributions are pooled together
- individuals in a group work below their potential
- less accountability: in a group, individual efforts are less easily observed

What is deindividuation?

the loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people can't be identified (such as when they are in a crowd)
- a psychological state of decreased self-evaluation, leading to impulsive/disinhibited behavior
- people feel less accountable
- more obidence to group norms

What is process loss?

any aspect of group interaction that inhibits good problem solving

What is transactive memory?

the combined memory of a group that is more efficient than the memory of the individual members

What is groupthink?

a kind of decision process in which maintaining group cohesiveness and solidarity is more important than considering the facts in a realistic manner

What is group polarization?

the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclinations of their members

What is great person theory?

the idea that certain key personality traits make a person a good leader, regardless of the situation

What is transactional leaders?

leaders who set clear, short-term goals and reward people who meet them

What is transformational leaders?

leaders who inspire followers to focus on common, long-term goals

What is contingency theory of leadership?

the idea that the effectiveness of a leader depends both on how task-or relationship-oriented the leader is and on the amount of control the leader has over the group

What is task-oriented leaders?

leaders who are concerned more with getting the job done than with workers' feelings and relationships

What is relationship-oriented leaders?

leaders who are concerned more with workers' feelings and relationships

What is social dilemma?

a conflict in which the most beneficial action for an individual will, if chosen by most people, have harmful effects on everyone

What is the tit-for-tat strategy?

A means of encouraging cooperation by at first acting cooperatively but then always responding the way your opponent did (cooperatively or competitively) on the previous trial

What is negotiation?

A form of communication between opposing sides in a conflict in which offers and counteroffers are made and a solution occurs only when both parties agree

What is integrative solution?

solution to a conflict where both parties make trade offs, with each side conceding more to things not important to them but important to the other group

Social Facilitation experiment?

- Norman Triplett (1897) noticed that bicycle racers ad faster times in competition than when alone
- perhaps having people around increased our physiological arousal?

Triplett (1897): Fishing reels study?

- participants: children ages 8-17
- procedure: turn the reel as fast as possible to make a small flag complete circuits of a 4 meter course
- results: all children performed faster when in competition vs. when alone

Social facilitation was viewed as a universal principle, until

Zajonc noticed that most studies on social facilitation focused on well-learned physical responses:
- bicycling
- lifting weights
- eating rapidly

Zajonc found exceptions?

performances were worse (rather than facilitated) when being watched if tasks were unfamiliar and cognitively challenging
- math problems
- writing poetry
- memorizing nonsense syllables

Triplett was only partially right...

Zajonc (1965) argued that the type of task attered:
- well-learned vs. unfamiliar
- simple vs. complex

Zajonc (1969): cockroach maze study?

- cockroach placed in a tube, bright light at one end of the tube
- to escape the light, he had to run down the tube & into a dark box at the other end...
- IV: presence of absence of other cockroaches
- IV: complexity of the maze
- DV: speed of escape
- an audience improved cockroaches' performances on the easy straight-ahead task...
- but not on the more complex turning task

Zajonc (1969): results?

Simple Maze:
- alone: 41 seconds
- audience: 33 seconds
Complex Maze:
- alone: 110 seconds
- audience: 130 seconds

Michaels et al. (1982): pool hall experiment?

- secretly rated pool players in a hall as above or below average ability
- then, group of confederates entered and stood by the pool table as they played
-above average players' shot accuracy increased from 71 to 80% accurate
- below average players accuracy slipped from 36 to 25% accurate

Social facilitation: an audience makes people perform?

- better on simple tasks but worse on complex tasks when individual performance can be evaluated

The presence of people watching us?

- makes us more alert
- makes us concerned about what others think of us
- distracts us

Optimal Level of Arousal?

- for simple tasks, high arousal results in best performance
- for complex tasks, lower arousal results in best performance

Riggelman's (1880's) experiments?

- individual output declines on pooled tasks in all his experiments
example: rope-tugging, the sum of units pulled:
- 1 person 100
- 2 people 185
- 3 people 255
- 8 people 392
- blindfolded rope pulling /tug-of-war
- IV: believed people were behind them or not
- DV: effort put into pulling
- people pulled 18% harder when they thought they were alone

Latane, Williams, and Harkins (1979)?

sat participant in a group of up to 6 people...
- blindfolded & headphones
- played clapping or shouting over headphones
- IV: believed they making noise alone with up to 5 others
- DV: 1/3 less noise when they believed others were also making noise

_____= relaxation, which hinders performance on simple tasks but enhances performance on complex ones

less accountability in groups

Why does loafing occur?

- diffusion of responsibility
- sucker effect

What is the diffusion of responsibility?

we feel we're not solely responsible for the group's performance, so we expend less effort

What is the sucker effect?

willing to do your share but not more since everyone is sharing the credit, you dont want to be the sucker who does all the work

We loaf less when?

- personal efforts are identifiable (accountability)
- task is challenging, appealing, or important
- we believe our contribution is essential
- working with friends, not strangers
- the group is small or cohesive

Who slacks the most?

- men loaf more than women
- loafing increases in Western the Asian cultures

The average # of criminal responses given by college students is the same as the # antisocial/criminal responses given by inmates at a maximum security prison -- both are usually around ___% of the responses

36%