Social Facilitation

Description of Stage 2

One interpretation of such effects was advanced by Zajonc (1965). He suggested that we could begin to understand the differential effects of the presence of others by examining the response required of the subject. In the case where the response is simple and called for it might be said that it is the "dominant" response to the situation. On the other hand, if the response is complicated, it might be termed the "subordinate" response in the situation. That is, the collection of all the other responses to the situation are dominant in that they are more likely to be elicited, however relevant they are to the corrected response as defined by the experimenter. This distinction is also applicable to the differences between "learning" and "performance". At the beginning of acquisition of a response there are many more responses available to the organism other than the correct one. Hence, during acquisition the correct response is the subordinate one. Upon mastery, however, the proper response is firmly established and it is the likeliest response to the situation. Thus is has become the dominant response.

Viewing the results of our earlier experiments we might reflect that the responses that were facilitated by the presence of others were those that could be termed dominant, while those that were inhibited could be termed subordinate. Within this framework we might seek other, nonsocial conditions that produce similar results in an effort to understand how the social situation produces such results.

A widely demonstrated influence on performance is the level of activation or arousal in the organism. One concept of this general energy level has been termed "drive" or "D" (Spence, 1965). D is held to be a nonspecific energizer. That is, while it stems from specific energizers such as pain, cold, hunger, etc., it has the consequence of activating the entire organism in whatever situation the organism happens to be. Further D, enhances the emission of dominant responses.

These principles are illustrated in a simple experiment. Rats were trained to press a bar for food. When they were proficient at the task (in our terms, when the bar press was the dominant response) they were satiated for food and returned to the test situation for two 5-minute extinction trials. In these trials no food was give for any bar presses. Now one might expect that there was little reason for the animals to press the lever at all since there was no food forthcoming and they weren't hungry anyway. Indeed, during the first 5-minute extinction trial the subjects pressed the bar on average of only 1.8 times. During the second 5-minute trial, however, the bottom of the text box was flooded with water. It would seem that the dulge had little to do with anything else that had transpired in the situation. Nevertheless, the same satiated rats pressed the bar an average of 8.4 times during the flooding ( Webb & Goodman, 1958). Here we might conclude that the nonspecific energy provided by the presumably aversive water energized the dominant response in the situation.

Well, how far does this introduction bring us to an understanding of minimal social effects? Thus far, at least: if social presence produces results that are attributable to D in the above roughly comparable situations, then it may be that the mere presence of another is a source of D. What we require now is a set of experiments that employ known sources D, and an identical set experiments that employ social presence in the place of D. If the results of the experiments are similar, we may be able to draw some inferences as to the component in social situations that mediates performance differences.

Note: The point of this stage of the simulation is to examine the possibility of parallels between the effects of social situations and of D on performance. With this aim in mind it would be ill-advised to have experimental runs where both D and another (condition coact or audi) are present. Whatever the outcome, the 2 factors would be confounded. That is, you could not say which factor was "doing the work" in producing the effect. Likewise, it is not feasible that the subject work on two tasks at once; for each experimental group, choose only one task.