UTMUNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

Presence of others: Social Facilitation and Inhibition

Supplementary notes for Group Behaviours, Teams and Conflicts.Prepared by : Siti Rokiah Siwok

srsiwok@gmail.com

• 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

Social Facilitation

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• 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)

Audience effects

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• 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.

Social Facilitation/Inhibition

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• 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

Coaction

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• 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:

Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects

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1. 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.

Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects

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• 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)

Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects

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• 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.

Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects

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• 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.

Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects: Evaluation apprehension

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• 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.

Explanation of Social Facilitation/Inhibition effects

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• 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):

Social Loafing

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• Explanation:(1)Belief that individual efforts are not

being noticed, no chance being rewarded.

(2) 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

(3)Sucker effect ( Kerr, 1983)

Social loafing phenomena

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• 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.

Social loafing: Sucker effect