Group Performance Notes

SOCIAL FACILITATION: EFFECTS OF MINIMAL INTERDEPENDENCE

Social facilitation = people perform better when in the presence of others than when alone

Interdependence = each group member’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours influence the others’

Improvement and impairment

MERE PRESENCE:

Group presence improved performance

DRIVE THEORY:

Group presence increases arousal

• Improved performance on easy tasks

• Impaired performance on difficult tasks

EVALUATION APPRAISAL:

Group presence fear of evaluation increases arousal

• Improved performance on easy tasks

• Impaired performance on difficult tasks

DISTRACTION CONFLICT:

Group presence fear of evaluation distraction increases arousal

• Improved performance on easy tasks

• Impaired performance on difficult tasks

1 MERE PRESENCE: Simply the presence of others produces social facilitation

Triplett, 1898: cyclists times with 30% faster when cycling in a group vs alone

BUT not a simple correlation eg new task = performance worse in front of a group

2 DRIVE THEORY: Zajonc, 1965: presence of others increases arousal makes behaviours easier/harder

• Improves performance of accessible (well-learned, well-practiced) behaviors

• Impairs performance of less accessible (novel) behaviours

• Audience can affect two people performing the same task in opposite ways

Michaels et al., 1982:

• Expert pool players improved performance – good shots are highly accessible

• Poor players succeeded on fewer shots – miscues more accessible

• Innate mechanism to be aroused by presence of other members of species?

Blascovich et al., 1999: Social ‘Facilitation’ as Challenge and Threat

Challenge = sufficient resources to meet situational demands in a goal-relevant performance situation

Threat = insufficient resources to meet demands

Cardiovascular responses of Ps performing a well-learned task in the presence of others fit the challenge pattern ( cardiac response and vascular resistance)

Cardiovascular responses of Ps performing an unlearned task in the presence of others fit the threat pattern ( cardiac response and vascular response)

supports idea that audience improves performance when confident, impairs performance when not

Evans, 1979: 10 strangers crammed into a small room had higher BP/arousal than those in a large room

3 EVALUATION APPREHENSION: Cottrell

Not simply the presence of others it is the worry of being judged

Concern that others may be judging us we want other people to value/like us – self-esteem affected by others

Apprehension can improve performance on simple tasks and impair performance on difficult tasks:

Bartis et al., 1988:

Ps asked to list various uses for a knife – either simple uses or think of new, creative uses

Ps either believed their performance would be identified individually or pooled with everyone else’s

Possibility of individual evaluation on the simple task improved performance and impaired it for the difficult task

Allen et al., 1991: evaluation, not mere presence, is the factor that affects behaviour non-evaluative presence does not affect performance

4 DISTRACTION CONFLICT: Saunders et al., 1978

Presence of others makes us think about them, which may deflect attention from task at hand creates arousal and impacts performance

Schmitt et al., 1986:

Someone sat behind Ps in a location he could not monitor the Ps performance

Presence of the person improved performance on easy tasks and interfered with it on difficult ones

Conflict between concentrating vs reacting to others arousal

Presence of others: splits attention between other people and task attentional conflict

Distraction can focus us on task-relevant cues, improving performance

In a large crowd: arousing many opportunities for evaluation and distraction

Matthews et al., 1976: arousal induced by a crowd can energise effort, thereby improving performance on simple tasks (sports game), and impairing performance on complex tasks

PERFORMANCE IN FACE-TO-FACE GROUPS: INTERACTION AND INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence in groups

Face-to-face groups can be

• Task-interdependent: reliant on each other for mastery of material rewards through performance of collective tasks – eg a successful flight for airline crew

• Socially interdependent: reliant on each other for feelings of connectedness, respect, and acceptance – eg respect/ positive social identity

all face-to-face groups characterised by a combination of task and social interdependence – different groups have difference combinations

Group development

Wheelan, 1994: all groups go through different stages to maximise task and social interdependence

Stages of joining a group (group and individuals):

Group socialization = cognitive, affective, and behavioural changes that occur as individuals join and leave groups process of mutual evaluation by members and groups

Stages of the whole group: Ilgen et al., 2005:

Filthy Shits Never Produce Avocados

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