Social Facilitation/Social Loafing Flashcards
(42 cards)
What is the definition of social psychology?
“The scientific study of the reciprocal influence of the individual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions and emotions and his or her social environment.”
What does the Cuban cigar case tell us about the intuitions of social science?
It is not clear which intuition is best supported by the data
Define co-participants.
Actors participating individually on a non-competitive activity
Define social facilitation before and now.
Social Facilitation: (1) Original meaning: the tendency of people to perform simple or well-learned tasks better when others are present. (2) Current meaning: the strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) responses in the presence of others and the decrease in performance in non-dominant responses.
What did Triplett find out about social facilitation?
He found that children wound up their rods faster when there were other children around. There were contradictory results later.
What did Robert Zajonc find out about social facilitation?
The presence of others increases arousal (which is something that is physiologically measurable, i.e. heart-rate, sweating palms, etc.). Therefore arousal increases the dominant response (the response that comes most easily/most practiced).
What was Robert’s experiment with cockroaches?
Gave cockroaches two clear mazes (easy vs hard). The second condition was that he either placed other cockroaches outside the maze, or had no cockroaches watching. They ran through the easy mase faster when there was an audience, and ran through the hard maze more slowly when there was an audience.
What was Cottrell’s theory on social facilitation?
He argued that for humans, there is an evaluation-apprehension component. Human performance is enhanced/decreased ONLY if the audience is fit to evaluate the performance. A boss vs a kid evaluating your work. Study: 3 conditions (working on the task alone, with other people, and other people wearing blindfolds). He found that less social facilitation occurred when people were wearing blindfolds.
What was Baron’s theory on social facilitation?
He argued for distraction-conflict, if we’re distracted, that increases arousal and so the dominant response will increase. There is nothing social about it, if someone is mowing the lawn outside we will show increased performance on easy tasks.
What did animals disprove about social facilitation that contradicted Cottrell?
The dominant response was documented in animals too who are likely not conscious of evaluation.
Define social loafing.
The tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable.
How did a simple game of tug-of-war show the presence of social loafing? (Ringleman)
Tested cleverly in a tug-of-war game where a participant was made to think they were pulling in a team, those that were told this exerted 18% less effort than when they pulled alone.
Define “Free Riders”.
People who benefit from the group but give nothing in return
What does the Soviet Union teach us about social loafing?
When individual production is observed, output increases (interesting ties to the decrease in agricultural production in the Soviet Union vs equivalent area of private land)
How does the difficulty of the task affect social loafing?
When the task is challenging, appealing and involving enough, social loafing decreases (Olympic rowing team), adding incentives, or getting a team to strive for a common goal, increases participation
What are the two explanations for the existence for social loafing?
- Groups are less coordinated than the sum of individuals
2. People try less hard in groups
How did Latane deduce which explanation for social loafing was the correct one?
Latane convinced subjects that other people were in the room with them when in reality there were none. When people were alone they screamed louder than when they believed that they were with others (decibels went down to 72% of the original output with 5 other people), down to 84% when there was one other person
What reduces social loafing (6)?
- identifiability
- importance of task
- own efforts necessary for successful outcome
- threat of punishment for poor performance
- small group
- group cohesiveness (group of friends)
What is the collective effort model? (Karau and Williams)
Effort is exhausting but success is desired. People seek to optimize the ratio between their input and the groups output. (i.e. People are not entirely lazy and not entirely concerned with top performance – seek optimal balance).
Define social compensation.
The increasing effort from the baseline to make up for incompetent teammates. Karau and Williams found that social compensation happens in collective tasks when teammate says they are not going to try hard. Social loafing happens when the confederate says they’re going to try really hard.
Plaks and Williams finding on gender stereotypes and social loafing.
When the collective math task was given, a girl confederate resulted in social compensation, a boy confederate resulted in social loafing.
Define physical anonymity and Zimbardo’s experiment.
Philip Zimbardo (here he is again), tested the effect of covering one’s face on their moral actions and found that women who wore face covering white coats held a button that delivered an electric shock to someone for twice as long as those who wore name tags and didn’t have the frock
How do groups affect risk-taking behaviour? (Founded by Stoner)
Group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies; a strengthening of the members’ average tendency, not a split within the group
Define the risky-shift phenomenon.
Surprisingly, most people tend to be more extreme or take riskier decisions when they’re in groups (contrary to the original hypothesis)
