oNot guilty.” In teal trigty social tnfuene = chon’, history 19 made by ming” 1 effective Leach coxigonasts fo 00 ome entire seu YOR E reaps make a me 282 part 00 wiv yordcts range thei Y al k juat seklom = Fo inv ajo. group influence ong groups exist? nena of A why de. hose intriguins ‘oup ane persuasive et: What is # BM We will 6 at first things ? ane te evident 0 2 BT a sors Are seeartncts 3 ‘ re JH iy ietentify with Oe 1 RP share comer” Boe ‘uals become O78® jon individual: jeciieprannt = several people v airplane pas another, whe Is and rely nized? WI What is 4 The answer € ¢ detinitions: roup? Isa group a belong together : sther® Dous a group fori 7) tionships with one anoth invests ans of «BroUP IMEC, yd that all group iaevin Shaw (1981) arBue all group on stint = Tetherefore define’ a BPOUD os Kg hinge anpommon: Their nvembers inter2e e defines «Bre eng in commioy no interact and influence One another. Moreover, SS taan Nation John Turner (1987), 30 ci psychologist OI eel University dal peyeholOgi Toe. ging compar cine themselves a8 “os” in Poniragt 89 hem.” So jopsing COMPANIONS are G ° mber of reasons—to Meet a Hiced aed a group. Groups may exist for a ny ons —to me ie belong, to: ae ide information, to supply rewards, (0 accomplish goal By chaw’s definition, students working, Individually in a computer termina room would not be a group. Although physic cally together, they are mora collec ‘ndivicuals than an interacting group (each may, however, be part of an t room). The distinction betwee en collections of unrelated ‘gb and the more influential group behavior among jars. People who are merely in one another's presance do sometimes influence one another At a game, they may perceive Tremselves as “us” fans in contrast with “them” who root for the other team. in this chapter we consider three examples of such collective influence: social facilitation, social loafing, and deindividuntion. These three phenomena can occ; ‘with minimal interaction (in what we call “minimal group situations”). Th = ‘we will consider three examples of social influence in interacting g Pena polarization, groupthink, and minority influence. ee share Isa group ‘continue over tims Grath, 1954). namics expert tion of unseen group in a chat individuals in a computer interacting individuals sometimes bl ergroup behaviors Social facilitation Let's begin with social psychology’ 8 psychology’s most el si by the mere presence of another per wa as eye am : son? “Mere presence” means pe Besa, : ; neans people are not ea seers : not reward or punish, and in fact do nothing exc ie sent os Serantig i ‘audience or a3 co-actors. Would the mere hae reat beri on presence of others affect @ 8, eating, typing, or exam performance? The s h fi : * search for the an- individually on a noncompetitive st i ie pete ay, storia sciemific mystery stry, tury ago, Ni bicycle Y ago, Norman Tri ycle racing, noticed that cyeli an Triplett (1898), a fiidastasancantia a re faster when, racing together thanGroup Influence when racing alone against the clock. Before he peddled his hunch (that others’ presence boosts performance), Triplett conducted one of social psychology first laboratory experiments. Children told to wind string on 4 fishing reel as rapidly as possible wound faster when they worked with co-actors than when they worked alone, Ensuing experiments found th: presence also improves the speed with which People do simple multiplication problems and cross out designated letters. It also improves the accuracy with which people perform simple motor tasks, such as keeping a metal stick in contact with a dime-sized disk on a mov- ing turntable (F. W. Allport, 1920; Dashiell, 1930; Travis, 1925). This social- facilitation effect, as it came to be called, also occurs with animals. In the presence of others of their species, ants excavate more sand and chickens eat more grain (Bayer, 1929; Chen, 1937). In the presence of other sexually active rat pairs, mating rats exhibit heightened sexual activity (Larsson, 1956). But wait: Other studies revealed that on some tasks the presence of others hinders performance. In the presence of others, cockroaches, parakeets, and green finches learn mazes more slowly (Allee & Masure, 1936; Gates & Allee, 1933; Klopfer, 1958). This disruptive effect also occurs with people. Others’ pres- ‘ence diminishes efficiency at learning nonsense syllables, completing a maze, and pesforming complex multiplication problems (Dashiell, 1930; Pessin, 193 Pessin & Husband, 1933). Saying that the presence of others sometimes facilitates performance and sometimes hinders it is about as satisfying as the typical Scottish weather fore- cast—predicting that it might be sunny but then again it might rain. By 1940, re- search activity in this area had ground to a halt, and it lay dormant for 25 years itntil awakened by the touch of a new idea Social psychologist Robert Zajonc (pronounced Zy-ence, rhymes with science) wondered whether these seemingly contradictory findings could be reconciled. ‘As often happens at creative moments in science, Zajone (1965) used one field of research to illuminate another. In this case the illumination came from a well- established principle in experimental psychology: Arousal enhances whatever response tendency is dominant. Increased arousabenhances performance on ‘easy tasks for which the most likely—’dominant—response is the correct one. People solve easy anagrams, such as ate fastest when they are anxious. On chapwrs 283 social facilitation (1) Original meaning— the tendency of people to perform simple or well-learned tasks better when others are present. (2) Current meaning—the strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) responses in the presence of others.284° parttwo Social Influence: ject answer is not dominant, inet complex tasks, for which the &9 : in harder anagrams people do ya Pus promotes incorrect responding morse anxious. me When Could this principle volve the mystery of social facliaNOn? i soemeg *Meresocalemtact” | sable to assume what evidence now confirms—that others’ presengg Beane. '9: pane or energize people (Mullen & others, 1997), (We can all rect fet re ee eee in front of an audience.) [f80cial ATOUSAI origin g asenn Sets AE cee al Forinance om ensy tasks and don. atattere the rant responses, it should boost performancr 0” ean rforranee efficiency of each dieu tsks Now th confusing results made sense. Winding Sshing rag” CE eee icnen” | ing simple multiplication problems, and eating were all easy 1s for which gy Kay Mary, Oe Aes ance were well learned of naturally dominant. Sure enouizh, having oe ne round boosted performance, Learning nevr material, doin » waze,and ey ing, complex math problems were more difficult tasks for js ort Shonses were initially Tess probable. In these cases, the Prcsence of othe peer ved the number of incorrect responses on tlese tasks, The same gener, itle—arousal facilitates: dominant responsses—worked in be Sudden, what had looked like contradictory results no longer seemed dictory Zajonc’s solution, so simple and elegant, left other soctal psychologists t ing what Thomas H. Huxley thought after first reading Darwin's Ori Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen the Species: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" It seemed and thinking what obvious—once Zajonc had pointed it out. Perhaps, however, the pieces ap. obody hae thought” | peared to merge so neatly only through the spectacles of hindsight, Would the ‘orgy. | solution survive direct experimental tests? = ‘After almost 300 studies, conducted with the help of more than 25,000 unter subjects, the solution has survived (Bond & Titus, 1983; Guerin, 19 Several experiments in which Zajone and his associates manufactured an arbi- trary dominant response confirmed that an atidience enlianced this response, in ane, Zajonc and Stephen Sales (1966) asked people to pronounce various nor nce words between 1 and 16 times. Then they told the people that the same words would appear on a scteen, one at a time, Fach time, they were to guess which had appeared. When the people were actually shown only random black lines for a hundredth of a second, they “saw” mostly the words they had pro- nounced most frequently: These words had become the dominant responses People who took the same test in the presence of two others were even more likely to guess the dominant words (Figure 8-1). In various ways, later experiments confirmed that social arousal facilitates dominant responses, whether right or wrong. Peter Hunt and Joseph Hillery (1973) found that in others’ presence, students took less time to learn a simple maze and more time to learn a complex one (just as the cockroaches do!). And James Michaels and his collaborators (1982) found that good pool players in student union (who had made 71 pereent of their shots while being unobtni- sively observed) did even better (80 percent) when four observers came up t watch them play. Poor shooters (who had previously averaged 36 percent) did even worse (25 percent) when closely observed. “ rae ei well-practiced skills, which helps explain why they often Fr mare Hhan 80000 ay the responses of a supportive crowd. Studies 1,000 college and professional athletic events in Canada, the United States, and England reveal that home t i i mes fart ec leams win about 6 in 10 ga soccer see Tae arn ate football, somewhat more for basketball and } The home advantage may, however, also stem from th® "————— - 286 parttwo Heightened arousal in crowded homes also tends to increase stress. Crowding produces less distress in homes divided into mary spaces, horvever, enabling people to withdrao in privacy (Exams & others, 1996, 2000). number (Jackson & with their numb é a onscious attentic The effect of other people increase: ae 1981; Knowles, 1983). Sometimes the arousal and st See ees ated by a large audience interferes even with well learned, automat belayis such as speaking. Given extreme pressure, we're vulneral eee ers tend to stutter more in front of larger auidiences than w f anelor wo" ail players become slip ‘one or two people (Mullen, 1986). College ba od by a packed fess accurate in their free-throw shooting when very highly aroused by a packed rather than a near empty fieldhouse (Sokoll & Mynatt, 1984). Close together, friendly people are liked even more, and wtfriendlly peopl disliked even more (Schiffenbauer & Schiavo, 1976; Storms & Thomas, 197 experiments with Columbia University students and with Ontario Science Cen- ter visitors, Jonathan Freedman and his co-workers (1 979, 1980) had an accom- Plice listen to a humorous tape or watch a movie with other subjects. When they all sat close together, the accomplice could more readily induce the subjects to laugh and clap. As theater directors and sports fans know, and as researchers have confirmed, a “good house” is a full house (Aiello & others, 1983; Worchel & Brown, 1984). Perhaps you've noticed that a class of 35 students feels more warm and lively in a oom that seats ust 35 than when spread around a room ther seats 100. This occurs partly because when others are close by, we are more likely to notice and join in their laughter or clapping. But crowding also enhances arousal, as Gary Evans (1979) found. He tested 10-person groups of University cl ts 5 : B ity of Massachusetts students, either in a room 20 by 30 feet or in one 8 by 12 feet, C; si in the large room, those densely packed had higher mate, Com PareG to those Mines: 'Y Pa ad higher pulse rates and blood pres. cating arousal). Though their performance ou. els Suffer, on difficult tasks they made more errors, liane dents in India, Dinesh Nagar and Janak Pandey (1997) 0) 0! university stu- crowding hampered performance only on complex tasks, suit cult anagrams, So, crowding enhances arousal a responses,IE" Group tvfiuence —tuapiors 295 figure 6-1 Social facilitation of dominant responses, People rerpumied wit Se dinate — responses Donvinant responses Source: Data from Zajonc & Sales, 1966, table 8-1. Home advantage in major team sports Source: Data from Courneya & Carron (1992). Baseball data from Schleriker & others (1995) players’ familiarity with their home environment, less travel fatigue, feclings of dominance derived from territorial control, or increased team identity when cheered by fans (Zillmann & Paulus, 1993). CROWDING: THE PRESENCE OF MANY OTHERS So people do respond to others’ presence. But does the presence of observers re- of stress, a comrade can be comforting. But with ally arouse people? In times ents oe others present, people perspire more, breathe faster, tense their les more, and have Fe ee pressure and a faster heart rate (Geen & Gange, 1983; Moore & Baron, 1983). Even a supportive audience may elicit poorer perfor- mance on challenging tasks (Butler & Baumeister, 1998). Having mom and dad likely won't boost your performance. at your first piano recital pi 8.284° partewo on beg stimyalation of the animal spitite that heightens the efficiency 0 individual wi Karl Mats, Dee & 186 ere social contact Discovery co seeing what nobody has thought Atbert von Seeni-Gyotgy Social Influence increased arousal ot dominant. nignet a da sedtee when anagrams peor” al facilitation? It seem ; aystery of social aa ee cicero 1 re 188 we can all recall { 97). ¢ ei roe ‘qrousal facilitate d cy tasks ne HE fOr On Mee. Winding fishing reels, dc complex tasks, for which the co rect ee mirect resparncling/ On hare promotes i anxious, Could this principle solve the sume what evidence ste (Marlen & othe of an audiet sonable toe more tetise oF excited in front nant responses, it should best peerformant ee difficult tasks. Now tho confusing results made voreall easy tasks (or which the igs up pin and ar anh Dv es material, doing a maze, anc! responses were well learned or Natur ally ning new 0 around boosted performance. Le pel tise core 5 vere more difficult tasks for white! ing complex math problerns were mo Ma toate ithe presence Re : e tasks. The same ¢ worked in both cases. Suda o longer seemed contradictory sponses were initially less probable increased the number of incorrect respon rule—arousal facilitates dominant responses what had looked like contradictory results nm 1 : Zajonc’s solution, so simple and elegant, left other social psychologists think ing what Thomas H. Huxley thought after first reading Darwin's Origin: of the Species: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!” It seemed obvious—once Zajonc had pointed it out. Perhaps, however, the pieces ap- peared to merge so neatly only through the spectacles of hindsight. Would the solution survive direct experimental tests? After almost 300 studies, conducted with the help of more than 25,000 vol- unteer subjects, the solution has survived (Bond & Titus, 1983; Guerin, 1993). Several experiments in which Zajonc and his associates manufactured an arbi- trary dominant response confirmed that an audience enhanced this response, In fone, Zajonc and Stephen Sales (1966) asked people to pronounce various non- aa So and 16 times. Then they told the people that the same ‘eons wold appear on a sren,one ata time Each time they were to gues ‘ apps ‘en the people were actually shown only random black lines fora hundredth of a second, they "saw” mostly the words they had nounced most frequently. These words had become the dominant sen People who took the same test in the presence of two others ee eh piesa - ig fo others were ly to guess the dominant words (Figure $1), In various ways, later experiments cor dominant responses, wither right or ae me pie ae (1973) found that in others’ presence, students took lo: Se cen Dalley maze and more time to learn a complex one (just as the qe? ome 2 Simple James Michaels and his collaborators (1982) found that cose shes dO! And student union (who had made 71 percent of their she oe POO! Players in.a sively observed) did even better (80 percent) uhen fete ele Pelt unobiru- watch them play: Poor shooters (who had previewed oesezvers came up to even worse (25 percent) when closely observed, > Y°T#8°4 36 percent) did Athletes perform well-practiced skills, which heb Perform best when energized by the esponses of 4 hare Petit WhY they often more than 80,000 college and profess SHPPortive crowd United States, and England reveal that home ae stie event ee (somewhat fewer for baseball and football sons in aise y fan = soccer—see Table 8-1), see ne t knee ). The home advantage may, hho en vasketball and responses even moresummarizes a Variety of observ simple summary of many res 1s. Social-facili ich findings. A good thes predictions that (1) help confirny or modify the theory, (2) g) Group Influence theory does this well, It 'y also offers clear idle new explo ration, and) suggest practical applications. Social-facilitation theory has defi- pitely generated the first two types ot pre {that the presence of others is Does it also suggest (3) som face buildings have replaced private jow partitions. Might the resulting aw pe Social psychology’s most elementary issue concerns the mere presence of others. Some early experiments on thisquestion found that performance improved with observers or co-actors present. Others found that the pres- ence of others can hurt performance. Robert Zajonc reconciled these find- ings by applying a well-known prin- ciple from experimental psychology: Arousal facilitates dominant re- sponses, Because the presence of oth- em is arousing, the presence of observers or co-actors boosts perfor ‘ousing and th gominant responses) have been contirmed, life to.a long dormant field of research, «tical applications? We cated guesses about possible applications. As Figure 8-2 sh ottices with large, ope areness of athers’ presence help boost the formance of well-earned tasks, but disrupt creative thinking on complex sks? Can you think of other possible applica diction: (1) The basies of the theory and (2) the theory has brought new an make some ecu ws, many new of reas divided by correct response is dominant) and hinders performance on difficult tasks (for which incorrect responses are dominant) But why are we aroused by others’ presence? Experiments suggest that the arousal stems partly from evaliia- tion apprehension and partly from d traction—a conflict between paying attention to others and concentrating on the task. Other experiments, in- cluding some with animals, suggest that the presence of others can be arousing even when we are not eval- mance on easy tasks (for which the uated or distracted. / Social loafing Ina team tug-of-war, will eight people on a side exert as much force as the sum of their best efforts in individual tugs of war? If not, why not? And what level of individual effort can we expect from members of work groups? Social facilitation usually occurs when people work toward individual goals and when their efforts, whether winding fishing reels or solving math prob- Jems, can be individually evaluated. These situations parallel some everyday Work situations, but not those in which people pool their efforts toward a com- ‘mon goal and where individuals are mot accountable for their efforts. A team tug-of-war provides one such example. Organizational fundraising —pooling candy sale proceeds to pay for the class trip—provides anather, So does a class Project where all get the same grade. On such “additive tasks” —tasks where the Sroup’s achievement depends on the sum of the individual efforts—will team spirit boost productivity? Will bricklayers lay bricks faster when working as.@ team than when working alone? One way to attack such questions is with labo- chapters 289 Summing up288 part ewe figure 8-2 In the “open-office plan people work in the Presence of others, How might this affect worker efficiency? Social Influence sd can also interfe " uate ; « fee! when being eva & Baumeister, [hal conscenaras we de cally (Mullen & Ba aa u f . h in i ply rs analyze their body ™ cious etbal ERs ly to miss. critical free throws, they are more likely # Driven by distraction 4 Danny Moore (1978; Baron, 1 tied Glenn Sanders, Robert Baron, and Da ,y theorized that when 01 evaluation apprehension a step further. They theories we ge ter how co-actors are doing of how an audience is TATE This conflict between paying attention to others and FS Peak pe overloads the cognitive system, causing arousal. pee ard deed “driven by distraction” comes from experiments tha prod itation not just by the presence of another person >! distraction, such as firs of light (Sanders, 1981a, 1981b) even by 2 Mere presence ' Zajonc, however, believes that the mere presence of others produces som tion apprehension or arousing distraction. For ex. arousal even without evalu at ample, people's color preferences are stronger when they make judy others present (Goldman, 1967). On such a task, there is no “good” or no reason to be concerned with their r answer for others to evaluate and thus actions. Still, others’ presence is energizing. Recall that facilitation effects also occur with nonhuman animals. at an innate social arousal mechanism common to much of the zoolk world. (Animals probably are not consciously worrying about how other an mals are evaluating them.) At the human level, most joggers are energized when jogging with someone else, even one who neither competes nor evaluates This is a good time to remind ourselves of the purpose of a theory. As we noted in Chapter 1, a good theory is a scientific shorthand: It simplifies and This hint Source: Photo courtesy of Herman Miller ineWHY ARE WE AROUSED IN THE PRESENCE OF OTHERS? this point we have seen that what you do well, you will be energized to do best in front of others (unless you become hyperaroused and self-conscious). Vhat you find difficult may seem impossible in the same circumstances. What s it about other people that causes arousal? There is evidence to support three ible factors. Evaluation apprehension Nickolas Cottrell surmised that observers make us apprehensive because we vonder how they are eveluating us. To test whether evaluation apprehension Cottrell and his associates (1968) repeated Zajonc and Sales’s nonsense- llable study at Kent State University and added a third condition. In this mere presence” condition they blindfolded observers, supposedly in prepara- tion for a perception experiment. In contrast to the effect of the watching audi- nce, the mere presence of these blindfolded people did not boost well-practiced responses. Other experiments confirmed Cottrell’s conclusion: The enhancement of dominant responses is strongest when people think they are being evaluated. In one experiment, joggers on a University of California at Santa Barbara jogging path sped up:as they came upon a woman seated on the grass—if she was fac- ing them rather than sitting with her back turned (Worringham & Messick, 1983), Evaluation apprehension also helps explain * Why people perform best when their co-actor is slightly superior (Seta, 1982) * Why arousal lessens when a high-status group is diluted by adding people whose opinions don’t matter to us (Seta & Seta, 1992) evaluation apprehension Concern for how othe are evalua * Why people who worry most about others’ evaluations ate the ones most affected by their presence (Gastorf & others, 1980; Geen & Gange, 1983) * Why social-facilitation effects are greatest when the others are unfamiliar and hard to keep an eye on (Guerin & Innes, 1982)