Social Facilitation

Abstract

The question at the heart of social facilitation research is how the presence of another person affects performance. If you play a musical instrument alone versus in front of an audience, is your performance typically better or worse? If you type on a computer with no one around, compared with when someone else is merely working in the background or observing you, how do these conditions affect both the speed and the accuracy of your typing?

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SOCIAL FACILITATION
The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology,edited by Irving B. Weiner and W. Edward Craighead.
Copyright ©2009 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The question at the heart of social facilitation research is
how the presence of another person affects performance. If
you play a musical instrument alone versus in front of an
audience, is your performance typically better or worse? If
you type on a computer with no one around, compared with
when someone else is merely working in the background
or observing you, how do these conditions affect both the
speed and the accuracy of your typing?
Allport (1924) first used the term social facilitation to
describe ‘‘an increase in response merely from the sight
or sound of others making the same movement’’ (p. 262),
although it now refers to either an increase or decrease in
response and from a person who might not be making the
same movement. Vaughan and Guerin (1997) argued that
an earlier experiment by Triplett (1898), commonly said
to be first in social facilitation, was not related.
The factors affecting performance in the presence
of another person were comprehensively delineated by
Allport (1924) and Dashiell (1935), and they include
competition (rivalry), modeling, encouragement or social
reinforcement, arousal, monitorability, imitation, group
membership, distraction, and evaluation (Guerin, 1993).
There is evidence for each of these, and they have separate
research literatures.
Social facilitation research has probably held together
as a distinct topic only because of the work of Robert
Zajonc. Zajonc (1965) first hypothesized that new or poorly
learned actions would be facilitated. For example, an
accomplished flute player would perform better with other
people present, whereas a poor or beginner flute player
would do worse. This formed a simple 2 ×2 experimental
design with participants performing alone or with some-
one else present and performing either a well-learned or
a new behavior. At least 15 theories for this were pro-
posed between 1965 and 1993, and at least 100 tests were
based on this simple design (Guerin, 1993). Since Zajonc’s
thorough review, more theories and studies have appeared
without adding anything new to the lists of Allport (1924)
and Dashiell (1935).
The second hypothesis of Zajonc (1965) was that, apart
from the factors mentioned earlier, there still might be
effects from just the ‘‘mere presence’’ of another person,
a term probably taken from Burnham (1910, p. 766).
This negative definition led researchers to attempt to
control for all other factors while measuring performance
changes. However, it was difficult to control for so many
other factors, and only 91 of 313 studies had suitable
controls (Guerin, 1993). This situation has not improved
since that review, and none of the new studies examined
for this current review has learned from the earlier design
faults. The most common of these faults was to have an
experimenter present in the ‘‘alone’’ condition.
It has been argued that this whole research endeavor
was unsuccessful not only because all the factors could
not easily be controlled, but also because a single measure
was typically used as evidence for both the effect of social
facilitation and for the alternative theory (Guerin, 1993).
Theories were needed of what constituted mere presence so
that independent measurements could be made of perfor-
mance and the theoretical mechanism. This has continued
in the most recent research in this area.
Two reliable main effects have been found using the
simple designs and single measures. First, when someone
else is present, people tend to behave in accordance with
socially expected standards of performance. This leads
to conformity with what they think the experimenter or
others want them to do, which is usually to try harder
at their performance and to do well, but only when they
believe that they can be monitored (i.e., when there can
be consequences by the experimenter). The second main
effect that has been found is an increase in alertness or
attention. That is, people are more attentive to what is
going on, or are more rule-governed or verbally governed
in their behavior, when someone is present versus when
they are alone. This impacts their performance in different
ways: If the task is difficult or new, then they will do worse
if they are paying attention elsewhere (Sanders, 1984); if
the task is easy, then they might be more relaxed if
they have time to watch what people are doing (Guerin,
1993).
There is also a large social facilitation research litera-
ture with nonhuman animals. The findings seem to reflect
what the species normally does alone or in groups (Guerin,
1993). Normally, solitary animals (cats) will become fear-
ful if put in the presence of another animal and will be
therefore feeding but increase other aggressive or defen-
sive behaviors. Animals that normally live in groups (rats)
will tend to interact socially and eat less but play more
when put together. Chicks put together in groups become
less fearful but do not interact and therefore eat more than
when alone.
The problem, then, is similar to that suggested for
human studies. If only a single measure is used, such as
the facilitation or inhibition of feeding, then there were
contradictory findings: The rats eat less in groups, but
the chicks eat more. If the whole context or social ecology
is measured, then the contradictions disappear: The rats
use their time together to groom and play and therefore
stop eating, whereas the chicks reduce their fear activities
when in groups and spend the extra time eating.
A recent new area to draw on the social facilitation
literature is studying the effects of performance on elec-
tronic devices such as computers. As employers wish to
know what computer operators are doing, the question
is whether monitoring their performance electronically
(when no actual person is present) has an effect. Although
on the whole, such studies have not learned from the

2SOCIAL FACILITATION
design faults and theoretical distinctions outlined previ-
ously and still use the term social facilitation casually, some
interesting research has been done. For example, one
study linked the shell of a social facilitation study to par-
ticipants’ perceptions of fairness when being electronically
monitored (Douthitt & Aiello, 2001).
The problem of social facilitation research with humans
comes down to the fact that there is too much reliance on
simple designs and sparse measures. It is not enough to
know that people type less when someone else is present
with them; we need to measure what they are doing
instead. It has also been argued that all behavior is social
for humans, even when alone (Guerin, 2001) and that the
full context needs to be investigated if sense is to be made
of the vexing question of social facilitation.
REFERENCES
Allport, F. (1924). Social psychology. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Burnham, W. H. (1910). The group as a stimulus to mental
activity. Science,31, 761–766.
Dashiell, J. F. (1935). Experimental studies of the influence
of social situations on the behavior of individual adults.
In C. Murchison (Ed.), A handbook of social psychology
(pp. 1097–1158). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.
Douthitt, E. A., & Aiello, J. R. (2001). The role of participation
and control in the effects of computer monitoring on fairness
perceptions, task satisfaction, and performance. Journal of
Applied Psychology,86, 867–874.
Guerin, B. (1993). Social facilitation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Guerin, B. (2001). Individuals as social relationships: 18 ways
that acting alone can be thought of as social behavior. Review
of General Psychology,5, 406–428.
Sanders, G. S. (1984). Self-presentation and drive in social facili-
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Triplett, N. (1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and
competition. American Journal of Psychology,9, 507–533.
Vaughan, G. M., & Guerin, B. (1997). A neglected innovator in
sports psychology: Norman Triplett and the early history of
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Sport,14, 82–99.
Zajonc, R. B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science,149, 269 –274.
BERNARD GUERIN
University of South Australia