Social Facilitation

History

In 1897 Norman Triplett observed that bicycle racers rode faster against competitors than against a clock. He then conducted experiments verifying that children wound a fishing reel faster when they had competitors. Other researchers found that, when conspecifics were present, ants moved more sand, chicks ate more feed, and dogs ran faster. Knut Larsson reported that rat pairs copulated more if they were in the presence of other copulating rat pairs. In one intriguing study, Robert Zajonc and his associates found that cockroaches ran faster down a straight runway to escape a light if the runway was lined with acrylic cubicles containing other cockroaches. Similarly, humans eat more, purchase more, and jog faster when they are in the presence of other people. In short, responses are intensified in terms of speed, vigor, or probability of occurrence when humans, insects, and animals are observed by an audience or are performing with coactors. Because so many of the early studies reported improvements in performance in others' presence, the term social facilitation came to be synonymous with the impact of such social presence and to some degree remains so today.

However, by the 1930s it had become apparent that, occasionally, having people work together on a task could also impair performance. Thus, if people collaborate on a single group task such that their individual contributions are masked, social loafing rather than social facilitation occurs. In addition, even on noncollaborative tasks (in which one's individual output is easily assessed), working alongside coactors (or before an audience) impairs performance in some cases. For example, such social conditions impair performance when people work on Greek epigrams or [Page 792]complex computer problems. Such results initially provoked some confusion. However, in a classic 1965 paper, Zajonc offered an integrative explanation for these outcomes that reinvigorated research on this topic.

Theoretical Views