Social Facilitation as a Function of the Mere Presence of Others

Abstract

According to R. B. Zajonc's (1965) drive theory of social facilitation, the mere presence of others increases arousal and, thereby, the frequency of dominant responses (i.e., responses with the greatest habit strength). In the present experiment, U.S. undergraduates performed a stimulus discrimination task under 1 of 2 conditions: in the presence of another individual (audience) or alone. The mere presence condition was designed to make it difficult for the participants to attend directly to the audience. The task was designed to minimize the likelihood that the specific response (numerical preference) would be attributable to a desire to respond appropriately to the audience. There was a significant difference in the mean number of dominant responses between the participants in the audience condition and those in the alone condition. The results provide support for Zajonc's mere presence drive theory of social facilitation.     

Persuasive argumentation and social comparison as determinants of attitude polarization

Several of our studies indicate that persuasive-arguments theory by itself is an adequate explanation of polarization. Sanders and Baron (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1977, 13, 303–314) criticize this research. More generally, they contend that both argumentation and comparison are involved, “with persuasive arguments facilitating the shifts motivated by social comparison.” We feel that their critique is unconvincing. Relevant portions of the standard literature are reviewed to demonstrate that social comparison is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for polarization. Finally, we speculate about how persuasive-arguments theory could be extended to argument-poor settings (e.g., Asch's line comparison situation).     

Distraction and social comparison as mediators of social facilitation effects

Sanders and Baron (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 956–963) suggested that increases in drive produced by the presence of others (social facilitation) are due to the tendency for others to distract task performers as they worked on a task. This Distraction-Conflict theory proposes that socially mediated drive induction will occur whenever there is some reason to shift attention from the task to the social stimuli. In the case of humans, one such reason may be the opportunity to obtain social comparison information from an audience or coactors. The present research demonstrated that social facilitation effects (improved simple task performance and impaired complex task performance produced by the presence of others) occurred only when subjects were motivated to obtain comparison information (Experiment I) and when comparison information was available (Experiment II). The availability of comparison information also led to increased accuracy in estimating the coactor's performance. This indicated that in conditions manifesting social facilitation, subjects were spending some time monitoring the coactor's work, which is an inherently distracting activity. Several supplementary measures of distraction were generally consistent in indicating greater distraction under conditions manifesting social facilitation. The present results offer no support for the explanations of social facilitation suggested by Zajonc and by Cottrell.     

Age differences in memory span

Five-year-olds recalled fewer items than adults in memory-span tasks involving both familiar and unfamiliar faces. This occurred even though the use of rehearsal and recoding strategies was minimized for adults. This residual age difference may be partially accounted for by two further processing limitations in children. The five-year-olds needed more time than adults to name a face (Experiment 1) and to encode a face (Experiment 2). In order to test whether limitations in children's initial recognition and stimulus-identification processes could account for recall performance, Experiment 3 reduced adults' exposure duration in the memory-span task. This led to a drastic reduction in the age difference. Other factors contributing to remaining age differences included adults' adaptability in using various alternative encoding and retrieval strategies which elevated their recall performance.     

Social facilitation as a function of the mere presence of others

According to R. B. Zajonc's (1965) drive theory of social facilitation, the mere presence of others increases arousal and, thereby, the frequency of dominant responses (i.e., responses with the greatest habit strength). In the present experiment, U.S. undergraduates performed a stimulus discrimination task under 1 of 2 conditions: in the presence of another individual (audience) or alone. The mere presence condition was designed to make it difficult for the participants to attend directly to the audience. The task was designed to minimize the likelihood that the specific response (numerical preference) would be attributable to a desire to respond appropriately to the audience. There was a significant difference in the mean number of dominant responses between the participants in the audience condition and those in the alone condition. The results provide support for Zajonc's mere presence drive theory of social facilitation.     

The influence of task variation and maintenance tasks on the learning and affect of autistic children

Analyses of autistic children's learning and affect have begun to consider the role of antecedent variables, including the manner with which tasks are sequenced within instructional sessions. Within the context of a simultaneous-treatments design, this experiment evaluated autistic children's affect and rate of task acquisition under three experimental conditions. The conditions were (1) a constant task condition in which only one acquisition task was presented per session; (2) a varied-acquisition-task condition, in which 10 acquisition tasks were randomly interspersed throughout each session; and (3) a varied-with-maintenance-task condition, which randomly interspersed 5 acquisition tasks and 5 which had been previously acquired. The results showed significantly more efficient learning under the varied-maintenance condition, with no consistent differences separating the other two conditions. In addition, observers' ratings of the children's affect showed that the most positive judgments were produced by the varied-maintenance condition. The varied-acquisition condition was next while the constant task condition always produced the least favorable ratings. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on massed versus distributed practice, stimulus variation, and success-induced motivation. The implications for upgrading the treatment and education of handicapped children are also reviewed.     

The hard-won benefits of familiarity in visual search: naturally familiar brand logos are found faster

Familiar items are found faster than unfamiliar ones in visual search tasks. This effect has important implications for cognitive theory, because it may reveal how mental representations of commonly encountered items are changed by experience to optimize performance. It remains unknown, however, whether everyday items with moderate levels of exposure would show benefits in visual search, and if so, what kind of experience would be required to produce them. Here, we tested whether familiar product logos were searched for faster than unfamiliar ones, and also familiarized subjects with previously unfamiliar logos. Subjects searched for preexperimentally familiar and unfamiliar logos, half of which were familiarized in the laboratory, amongst other, unfamiliar distractor logos. In three experiments, we used an N-back-like familiarization task, and in four others we used a task that asked detailed questions about the perceptual aspects of the logos. The number of familiarization exposures ranged from 30 to 84 per logo across experiments, with two experiments involving across-day familiarization. Preexperimentally familiar target logos were searched for faster than were unfamiliar, nonfamiliarized logos, by 8 % on average. This difference was reliable in all seven experiments. However, familiarization had little or no effect on search speeds; its average effect was to improve search times by 0.7 %, and its effect was significant in only one of the seven experiments. If priming, mere exposure, episodic memory, or relatively modest familiarity were responsible for familiarity’s effects on search, then performance should have improved following familiarization. Our results suggest that the search-related advantage of familiar logos does not develop easily or rapidly.     

Social facilitation of laughter in children

This experiment was designed primarily to show that laughter can be socially facilitated. Independent groups of 7-yr-old children listened on headphones to amusing material under three conditions: they were tested in isolation (alone condition), with a nonlistening companion (audience condition), or with another who also listened to the material (coaction condition). Pairs of children were of like sex. The companions from the audience condition listened on a later occasion. Total times spent laughing and smiling were highest in the coaction condition, and were higher in the audience condition than in the alone condition. The data provide some support for Zajonc's “mere presence” hypothesis. They are also discussed in relation to: (1) informational aspects of laughter; (2) the relationship between overt expressive responses and subjective ratings of funniness; (3) an operational definition of “mirth”; (4) sex differences in laughter and smiling.     

The nature of equity-restoration: Some approval-seeking considerations

Subjects performed a proofreading task and evaluated its difficulty both beforehand and afterwards. They were overpaid or equitably paid by an experimenter who was or was not directly responsible for the level of pay they received, and who they believed would or would not see their post-test ratings. All subjects knew the experimenter would grade their task performance. Consistent with equity theory, overpaid subjects rated the task as having been more difficult than they had expected and did higher quality work than did equitably paid subjects. However, subjects who thought the experimenter would see their ratings (Aware condition) rated it as more difficult and performed more poorly on it than those who thought she would not see them (Unaware condition). Reported task difficulty increased among overpaid subjects under aware conditions, remained stable among overpaid subjects under unaware conditions, and decreased for equitably paid subjects. These findings suggested that what appears to be “equity-restoration” may be a self-presentation strategy designed to win the experimenter's approval, and that task ratings rather than performance will be used for this purpose when they can be communicated to the experimenter. The experimenter's responsibility for the subject's pay had no effect in the present study.     

Perceptual supports for one-to-one correspondence in the conservation of number

This study compared provoked and spontaneous one-to-one correspondence along with two tasks having more perceptual support for correspondence. These four levels of correspondence appeared in a conservation of number condition and two conservation-related conditions (a partially static array or a static array). There were two sets of stimuli (toy animals or corks) in each condition. In opposition to Piaget's predictions, the four levels of correspondence did not differ in difficulty for kindergarteners. There was a strong order effect (p<.001) in the direction of increasing conservation over the eight trials. There was some evidence that the standard conservation condition was easier than the other two conditions. Implications for Piaget's theory are discussed.     

Preferences for skill versus chance-determined activities: The influence of gender and task sex-typing

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that skill-chance activity preference by men and women is moderated by task sex relatedness. Men and women (total N = 368) opted to perform either skill or chance versions of masculine and feminine tasks, and then provided ratings of performance expectancy, importance of success, and perceptions of task characteristics. Results support the conclusion that men do not prefer skill and women chance as had been found previously, but rather that while men's skill preferences are higher than women's on a masculine taks, women prefer skill more than do men on a feminine task. Skill-chance preferences were primarily a function of the expectancy of success on skill tasks.     

Effects of positive and negative adult-child interactions on children's social preference

The effects of positive and negative interactions on children's performance and preferences for the adults associated with each type of interaction were studied. Five children served as subjects during daily sessions in which each of three adults followed prescribed patterns of social interaction. One adult (positive) dispensed positive comments contingent upon either color-sorting or completion of arithmetic problems; a second adult (negative) mildly reprimanded the child for off-task behavior; and the third adult (extinction or nonreactive) said nothing to the child when he was present. Following each session the three adults reentered and the child chose one of them for an additional period of interaction. Three response measures (frequency, latency, and percent of time on-task) and children's adult preferences were obtained daily. The negative adult affected the most task behavior and had strongest stimulus control; the positive adult, though exerting little control over children's behavior, was the most preferred. Children's adult preferences were not specific to the task setting, but were observed across a variety of contexts.     

Inferential processes in the forced compliance situation: A Bayesian analysis

The attribution made by an observer (O) to an actor in the forced compliance situation was regarded as a probability revision process which can be described by a Bayesian inference model. Os' perceptions of the forced compliance situation were analyzed in terms of the input components into the Bayesian model: prior probabilities of the relevant attitudes and the diagnostic values of the behaviors which the actor may choose. In order to test propositions made by attribution theory about such perceptions (Kelley, 1967;Messick, 1971), Os viewed actors under conditions of Low Inducement (LI) and High Inducement (HI). Before observing the actor's decision, Os estimated the prior probabilities of the relevant attitudes and the conditional probabilities of compliance and refusal given each of the attitudes. After observing the actor's decision, Os estimated the posterior probabilities of the attitudes. As expected, in the LI condition, compared to the HI condition, compliance was seen as less probable and more diagnostic about the actor's attitudes, and the posterior probability of the corresponding attitude was higher. Contrary to expectations, within both conditions, compliance, compared to refusal, was seen as less diagnostic and more probable.     

Mere presence is not enough: Responsive support in a virtual world

When individuals are faced with novel or threatening situations, the presence of a trusted companion should reduce anxiety and promote feelings of security. Attachment theory assumes, however, that mere presence is not sufficient for establishing security; an attachment figure must also be attentive and emotionally responsive. To test this idea, participants came to the lab with their romantic partner and completed a threatening cliff-walking task in a digital immersive virtual environment. The presence and nonverbal support behavior (attentive vs. inattentive) of their partner was experimentally manipulated. Results indicated that participants in the attentive-partner condition experienced the task as less stressful than those who were alone; they also reported feeling more secure during the task and were less vigilant of their partner's behavior compared to those in the inattentive-partner condition. Those in the inattentive-partner condition felt less cared for and kept greater physical distance from their partner on a subsequent task. These findings suggest that human beings are predisposed to monitor their social environment for signs of responsiveness, and that perceived responsiveness, not mere presence, is the key modulator of emotional security.     

Effect of an audience on learning a novel motor skill

The purpose of this study was to assess effects of an audience on learning a novel motor skill. Subjects (N=64) were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions and administered 15 30-sec. trials with 30 sec. intertrial periods on a pursuit rotor task on two different days. Comparison of Time-on Target performance between conditions indicated that the No Audience condition had significantly higher performance than the Audience condition in Session 1. Comparison of Absolute Retention and Final Retention scores among the four experimental conditions in Session 2 after 48 hr. yielded no significant differences attributable to the presence of an audience, thus supporting the hypothesis that an audience would have no effect on learning.     

Social episodes and social structure in an academic setting: The social environment of an intact group

The social environment of an intact academic group, composed of faculty members, research students, and staff, was studied using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. The perceived group structure and the perception of social episodes were represented, and the relationship between these two aspects of the social environment was analyzed. Results indicated that (a) the perceived group structure could be adequately represented in three dimensions with group members differentiated along dimensions of sociability, creativity, and competence, (b) an individuals' perception of the group and his position within it were significantly related, (c) group members perceived the social episodes of the group in terms of attribute dimensions such as anxiety, involvement, evaluation, and socioemotional vs task orientation, and (d) an individual's formal status and perceived position within the group were significantly related to his perception of the group's episodes. The results are discussed in terms of the factors influencing episode perception, and the symbolic processes mediating between social position and perception. The utility of social episodes in describing a social environment is considered.     

The effect of changes in posture and clothing on the development of unfamiliar person recognition

In contrast to face recognition little is known about the development of unfamiliar whole‐person recognition. Various cues in a person's appearance may contribute to recognition performance. An age‐related influence of different features on person recognition performance is possible. Here, we investigated two variable features of person recognition, namely posture and clothing, in 4‐year‐olds, 6‐year‐olds, 8‐year‐olds, 10‐year‐olds and adults. The experimental methodology of a short‐term recognition‐test with an immediate four alternative forced choice (4AFC)‐array was used. Targets were shown for 5 seconds. Experiment 1 clearly indicates that a variation of both posture and clothing decreases performance in all age groups compared to a standard, i.e. a no‐change condition. An interaction age×variation of posture and clothing was not observed. In order to untangle the two aspects of posture and clothing, Experiment 2 varied only posture between encoding and recognition. An age‐effect was shown, but no other significant result occurred. Experiment 3 investigated variation of clothing only, and found main effects of clothing and age. Because there was no interaction between the two factors we infer that a change of clothing impairs all subjects' recognition performance. Children's person recognition performance suffers in a way similar to adults' person recognition performance when clothing is varied. In contrast, changing posture does not necessarily decrease recognition accuracy, neither in children nor in adults. No developmental gains were found for dealing with the transformation of posture and clothing between the encoding and recognition phase. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social facilitation in a coaction setting: An examination of the effects over learning trials

Zajonc's proposal that the presence of others facilitates emission of dominant responses was examined in a coaction setting with human maze learning. On a maze where dominant responses were likely to be correct, coacting subjects made fewer errors than those working alone. On a maze where dominant responses were likely to be incorrect, subjects performing alone made fewer errors than those coacting. Investigation of task performance at different stages in learning showed that a change in the rate of learning corresponded to a change in the dominant response from incorrect to correct. It was concluded that the presence of others has a facilitative effect on the dominant response, hindering learning when the dominant response is incorrect and helping learning when the dominant response is correct. Coaction effects were extremely pronounced in females but almost nonexistent in males.     

Category typicality effects in children's memory performance: Qualitative and quantitative differences in the processing of category information

Kindergarten, third, and sixth graders (6, 9, and 12 years of age, respectively) received a cue-at-input/cue-at-output recall task, using category typical and atypical items that were based on either (1) children's conceptions of item typicality, or (2) adults' conceptions of item typicality. At each grade level, recall was greater with the child-defined lists than with the adult-defined lists, and typical items were recalled to a greater extent than atypical items. Further analyses items were recalled to a greater extent than atypical items. Further analyses revealed that the recall of typical items varied as a function of children's typicality ratings of items, and that the “typicality effect” in the adult-norm condition was due primarily to the childrennot realizing that many of the atypical items were appropriate category exemplars. In contrast, typicality effects in the child-norm condition were attributed to qualitative differences in the judged “goodness of example” of the typical and atypical items. The results were discussed in terms of the appropriateness of typicality as a dimension of children's natural language concepts, the role of age differences in knowledge base in affecting performance on a cognitive task, and of the importance of using child-generated norms in studies of children's processing of category information.