Social facilitation
The social facilitation theory (loosely translated theory of social relief ) states that living beings achieve better results in simple tasks with the mere presence of conspecifics. With complex tasks, this relief is reversed and the person's performance decreases.
The opposite term to social relief is social laziness , the relaxation of tension due to the presence of conspecifics.
Explanations
The phenomenon is primarily explained by the occurrence of emotional excitement in the presence of other people. Because of this excitement, people prefer to react with a dominant reaction, e.g. B. one will give a wrong answer in excitement, although one has only just learned the correct answer, because the - u. For years it may have been assumed to be correct - wrong answer is still the dominant response.
There are 3 theoretical positions to explain arousal
- mere presence (German "mere presence" ): This theory says that people are aroused simply because they know that other people are there and therefore react with a dominant reaction (theory by Robert Zajonc ).
- Evaluation expectation thesis: The thesis says that observed people think about the expectations of the audience and are therefore excited because they do not want to embarrass themselves and want to look good .
- Distraction thesis: This thesis states that observed people in turn observe the people in their environment themselves and are therefore distracted from the task.
Empiricism
This phenomenon was first observed by Norman Triplett in 1898. He observed that racing cyclists are faster when they are competing against others than when they are racing against the clock (so-called pacemaker phenomenon ).
Robert Zajonc then attributed this phenomenon to arousal in 1965. For experimental verification, he built a labyrinth in his laboratory , in which he placed a cockroach . More cockroaches could observe them. In the simple experimental condition, a light source was attached to one side and the hole to exit the labyrinth was on the opposite side. When the light source came on, the cockroach's dominant reaction was to leave the light directly, which also succeeded in a short time. If the experiment was carried out without the cockroaches in the "spectator boxes", the cockroach would take longer to get to the exit.
In the difficult experimental conditions , the cockroach could not leave the labyrinth directly because the exit was not at the opposite end of the labyrinth, but first had to walk around the corner to leave the light cone. This difficult task took the cockroach longer with spectators than without, which confirmed Zajonc's hypothesis.
See also
literature
- Robert Zajonc (1965). Social facilitation . Science, 149, 269-274
- Hazel Markus (1978). The Effect of Mere Presence on Social Facilitation: An Unobtrusive Test . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 14, 389-397