Social Performance

It is probably the case that there are some tasks that humans routinely perform alone. Yet, if one tries to think of such tasks, it becomes abundantly clear that, in fact, they are usually performed alongside or with other people. Essentially, humans play in groups and work in groups. Groups offer individuals a host of functions, from fulfilling needs for belonging, support, and intimacy to the ability to accomplish tasks that sole individuals could not even attempt (Forsyth, 1999). Group play and group work involve a number of layers of social complexity, including social inferences, impression formation, attitudes, stereotypes, affect, attraction, and conflict within and between groups. These layers are dealt with in other chapters of this volume. The bottom layer, however, requires an understanding of the basic psychological effects on the individual of trying to perform tasks with or alongside others.

In this chapter, we use the least restrictive definition of group: two or more people who are working on a task. It has been argued that small groups are no smaller than triads and that dyads are qualitatively different entities (see Moreland et al., 1994); however, a substantial amount of small group phenomena, such as social facilitation and social loafing, have been documented at the dyadic level and appear to operate under the same principles.

We restrict our review to the substantial research efforts on task performance in groups in which the outcome is quantifiable and achieved through effort. The dynamics of group decisions is excluded because it is dealt with elsewhere in this volume (see Chapter 18). We do not examine separately motivation, effort, and performance in groups, as that would prove to be largely repetitive. Thus, we discuss motivation and effort and note when they are not linked positively to performance.

We concentrate our review on two major research efforts: social facilitation and social loafing, although other related phenomena are discussed as well. These two phenomena are perhaps the two oldest lines of research in social psychology, each beginning at the end of the nineteenth century. Hundreds of publications have examined the validity, robustness, generality, and explanations of these two phenomena. On the face of it, they appear to be saying opposite things. Assuming for the moment that we are interested in relatively easy or well-learned tasks, social facilitation refers to the fact that we work harder in groups, and social loafing refers to the fact that we reduce our efforts in groups. Thus, sense must be made of these two old well-researched, yet apparently opposite phenomena. One useful distinction will be how individuals regard the ‘others’. Are they with us, [Page 292]or against us? If they are against us, as competitors, evaluators, or sources of comparison, we are likely to observe social facilitation; if they are with us, sharing the task demands and evaluation, we are likely to observe social loafing.

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