What is Social Facilitation?

Have you ever noticed how when you are giving a speech on a stage that you prepared for, and the audience is engaged in your words, you tend to get better and more confident in your delivery? This may be an impact of the phenomenon known as ‘Social Facilitation’.

Social facilitation refers to the impact of the presence of others on an individual’s performance. The mere presence can enhance a person’s performance of simple and well-learned tasks whereas it may interfere with the performance of complicated or unfamiliar tasks. Although this may seem simple, it is very nuanced. Let us take a deeper look into this complex psychological phenomenon.

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A History of the Concept

The phenomenon was first observed by Norman Triplett in 1988, who is a psychologist and a bicycle racing enthusiast. He became fascinated when he observed that cyclists rode their bicycles faster when they competed than when they were riding alone. From his further experiments, it was assumed for a long time that the presence of others always improved a person’s performance, thus it was termed social facilitation.

However, as research progressed, it was found through the work of psychologists such as Allport and Dashiell that while subjects responded at a higher rate in the presence of others, their errors also increased. Eventually, investigation into the phenomenon culminated in the work of Robert Zajonc. He proposed the idea that the presence of others increases the general arousal level of a person. It only enhances the performance of tasks which are ‘dominant responses’ of a person.

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Dominant responses are strong and well-learned responses. However, if the person does not have dominant responses to the task at hand, their performance can be impaired and worsened by the presence of others. This phenomenon was dubbed as ‘Social interference’ or ‘Social Inhibition. For example, a well-trained piano player would do better in the presence of a large audience, whereas an amateur student would make more mistakes than usual in the presence of others.

Even further analysis revealed that an individual’s performance is not always improved even when dominant responses are required. Social facilitation is most likely to occur when the other people who are present are involved when the task is being performed. Taking the previous example further, the performance of a trained musician would not improve if the audience wasn’t listening or seemed uninterested in the performance.

Types of Social Facilitation

There are two kinds of Social Facilitation, discussed below:

1. Audience Effects – Audience effects refer to the improvement of a person’s performance in front of an audience or passive spectators.
2. Co-action Effects – Co-action effects refer to the improvement in an individual’s performance in the presence of others who are also engaged in the same task.

Components of Social Facilitation

Social facilitation is known to involve several factors. The following section describes the major factors which affect the occurrence and intensity of social facilitation:

1. Physiological Factors –

A person’s level of physiological drive and arousal increases in the presence of others. The fundamental claim of Zajonc was that this high level of arousal facilitates well-learned and familiar responses but interferes with poorly learned responses. This explanation of social facilitation is based on Clark Hull’s theory of motivation, which states that a high level of arousal results in stress, which produces correct and improved responses for easy tasks, and incorrect and poor responses for difficult tasks.

2. Cognitive Factors –

This is the distraction conflict theory of social facilitation. It states that the presence of others produces a distraction conflict for the person performing a task. If the task is simple and well-learned, the person will be able to give their attention to the task and their focus will increase. But, if the task is difficult and unfamiliar, they will get distracted due to the presence of others, and their performance will deteriorate.

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3. Affective Factors –

Affective factors refer to how anxiety and self-presentation play a role in social facilitation. According to the psychologist Cottrell, it is not merely the presence of others that results in social facilitation. It is the apprehension of being evaluated by others while performing a task that results in an increased drive or level of arousal. The performer is aware that the audience or co-actors are not just passive spectators, but are actively judging and evaluating their performance.

Implications Of Social Facilitation

The concept of social facilitation has several consequences for human behaviour in public settings. Understanding the nuances of how behaviour and performance are affected in the presence of others can help us optimise our performance in some tasks. The first implication is for training and skill development. With the knowledge of social facilitation and inhibition, the ideal way of developing a skill is to let the person train in isolation for the initial stages, until they obtain mastery over the task. Once they have developed accurate and dominant responses for the same, they should be allowed to perform the task in the company of others, which will improve their performance.

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Design of workplace and Educational Settings also benefited from the knowledge of social facilitation. While a setting in which the space belonging to each person can be observed by others might be good for routine and simple tasks, a specialised and isolated space must be dedicated to tasks that are highly complicated and new for the employees/students. Comparisons among students can be helpful when they have completely learned a concept in school, however, competition with other students can prove to be detrimental to the learning of new concepts.

Sports is another field that benefits from the utilisation of principles of social facilitation. While athletes must be allowed to train in isolation, once they become professionals, the final game/performance of the sportsperson gets enhanced by a large audience that can cheer them on. Therefore, we can see the far-reaching implications of the concept of social facilitation. Going back to our first example, we can see in hindsight that if you have to give a good speech in front of a large audience, it is best to be prepared!