Presence of others: Social Facilitation and Inhibition

1. Presence of others: Social Facilitation and Inhibition Supplementary notes for Group and Team Communication. Prepared by : SitiRokiahSiwok srsiwok@gmail.com

2. Social Facilitation • Social Facilitation ( SF) involves the positive effects of the presence of others on an individual behavior. • Social inhibition (SI) involves the negative effect of other’s presence. • SF and SI are further influenced by audience effect and co-action

3. Social Facilitation/Inhibition • Social Facilitation and Social Inhibition theories explain the increase and decrease in performance when others are present, by either watching or working with him/her.

4. Audience effects • Audience effects takes place when a group of people passively watching an individual ( such as a sport event) • The strengths of the audience effects is a function of three (3) factors: audience size, physical proximity and status. • Other factors such as personality play a role ( extroverts vs introverts)

5. Coaction • The effect on behaviour when two or more people are performing the same task in the presence of one another is called coaction. • Examples: two runners competing against each other without the audience; two guys cycling against one another; shopping; eating

6. Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects • Performance does not always increase in the presence of others. There are others conditions such as: Performance increases when the task is easy or well learned and vice versa. There are four possible explanations for the above:

7. Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects • The mere presence of others naturally produce arousals and thus increase energy, helps individuals to perform well-learned tasks. But for a poorly learned tasks, presence of others hinders.

8. Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects • 2. Provides a means for comparison. • In some jobs this comparison effect increase competition and productivity, whereas in some jobs comparison effects may cause the employees to slow down ( decrease productivity)

9. Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects • 3.Creates evaluation apprehension. Judgment by others causes the differential effects ( Cottrel, 1972 in Aamodt 2010). The individual concerned are aware that the presence of others can be rewarding or punishing. For well learned tasks, knowing that s/he normally performs well, and thus expecting a rewarding experience with the presence of others.

10. Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects: Evaluation apprehension • If the task is not well learned, the individual may believe that s/he will not perform well and will be embarrassed, thus, with the presence of others, performs worse.

11. Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects • 4. The presence of others can be a source of distraction. • For a well learned task, the distraction may not be a cause of concern as the task is being performed “automatically”. • However, for a new task or a task not well learned the presence of other people is a source of distraction and thus prevents the individual to concentrate on the task.

12. Social Loafing • Social loafing theory explains the effect on individual performance when people work together on a task. • First investigated by Ringleman ( reported by Moede, 1927) in a study of “pulling a rope”. • More recent studies support the theory and found that social loafing occurs in many tasks. • Social loafing occurs more in poor performers ( Hardy and Crace, 1991), the reasons are not clear. Some possible explanations are (next slide):

13. Social loafing phenomena • Explanation: • Belief that individual efforts are not being noticed, no chance being rewarded. • Free-rider theory ( Kerr and Bruun, 1983). When realises that things are going on well, s/he thinks that his/her effort is not necessary and thus does not work as hard as s/he would if s/he were alone. If this is true, then free rider • Sucker effect ( Kerr, 1983)

14. Social loafing: Sucker effect • This happens when one group member notices that the other group members are not working hard and thus are “playing him for a sucker”. To avoid this situation, the individual lowers his/her performance to match the others’ performance. This theory however does not explain the loafing of other members.