The tendency to perform tasks better or faster in the presence of others is known as
social facilitation
. Although people sometimes perform better when they are in groups than they do alone, the situation is not that simple.
Social psychologists believe that
human behavior is determined by both a person’s characteristics and the social situation
. They also believe that the social situation is frequently a stronger influence on behavior than are a person’s characteristics. Social psychology is largely the study of the social situation.
According to psychologist Gordon Allport, social psychology uses scientific methods “to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied the presence of other human beings.”1 Essentially, social psychology is about
understanding how each
…
How performing in the presence of others affected your performance?
Firstly, the presence of others heightens an individual’s physiological arousal only if the individual is performing a complex task. Moreover, the mere presence of others
increases the speed of simple task performance and decrease the speed of complex task performance
.
The presence of others influences our actions, via social facilitation by
either strengthening or weakening our performance in the presences of others
; via social loafing by not exerting as much energy or effort into a task when working with a group; or via deindividuation by removal of self-awareness/restraint fueling …
Social Thinking, Social Influence, and Social Behavior
. Social psychology focuses on three main areas: social thinking, social influence, and social behavior. Each of these overlapping areas of study is displayed in Figure 1.1.
Social psychologists study how
social influence, social perception and social interaction influence individual and group behavior
. Some social psychologists focus on conducting research on human behavior.
3 THREE TYPES OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE. There are three types of influence that a social presence can have on a consumer:
utilitarian, value-expressive, and informational
(Burnkrant & Cousineau, 1975; Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Park & Lessig, 1977).
Social influence comprises the ways in
which individuals change their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment
. … Typically social influence results from a specific action, command, or request, but people also alter their attitudes and behaviors in response to what they perceive others might do or think.
Most of us encounter social influence in its many forms on a regular basis. For example,
a student may alter his or her behavior to match that of other students in a class
. The majority-held opinions of a group of friends are likely to inform the views of new members to that social group.
How is our behavior affected by the presence of others?
How is our behavior affected by the presence of others or by being part of a group? Social facilitation experiments reveal that the presence of either observers or co-
actors can arouse individuals, boosting their performance on easy tasks but hindering it on difficult ones
.
How do others influence our behavior?
Peer pressure
, also known as social pressure, can be defined as the influence others exert on an individual to change individual attitudes or behavior. … It showed that risk-taking behaviors increased in the presence of peers or passengers and decreased when he was alone.
What ways does the presence of others influence our Behaviour?
While it is clear others can influence our behaviour, most notably our
conformity to social norms
and our obedience of authority figures such as the police, we are responsible for our actions. While we exist in a society we conform to we must appreciate we can influence those around us and be conscious of how!
Why does the presence of others increase arousal?
Zajonc argued that when we are with others, we experience more arousal than we do when we are alone, and that this arousal
increases the likelihood that we will perform the dominant response
—the action that we are most likely to emit in any given situation.
Social facilitation, the theory, originated out of the field. of experimental social psychology as
a means of explaining individual’s
.
behavior in social situations
. Social facilitation is described as enhanc- ing one’s dominant response simply by being in the presence of others.
How do attitudes and actions affect each other?
Attitudes are feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events. … Attitudes affect
actions when external influences on what we say and do are minimal
, and when the attitude is stable, specific to the behavior, and easily recalled.
