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Module 17
Social Facilitation: The Mere
Presence of Others

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 Social Facilitation

• Original meaning: Tendency of people to perform simple or well-

learned tasks better when others are present.
• Current meaning: Strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely)
responses in the presence of others.

Co-actors are a passive audience

They are not competing, do not reward or punish,

do nothing except being present

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 Developments in Socal Facilitation Theory

Early research done on animals, human beings

Contrasting outcomes were later on explained by Zajong (1965)

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 Figure 17.1: The Effects of Social Arousal

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 Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge & Threat Motivation (Blascovic and Mendes, 2000)

My resources < my demands shame & anxiety increases, self-

esteem decreases (Threat) Novel

My resources > my demands pride & self-esteem increases

(Challenge) Well learned

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 Crowding: The Presence of Many Others

Sometimes the arousal and self-conscious attention created by a large

audience interferes even with well-learned, automatic behaviors, such as
speaking.

The effect of other people increases with their number

- A large audience can interfere with well-learned, automatic behavior
(stutterers –kekeme- tend to stutter more)

- Being in a crowd intensifies positive or negative reactions-bicycle racing

Being in a crowd intensifies positive or negative reactions.

• When they sit close together, friendly people are liked even more, and unfriendly people are
disliked even more.

Crowding enhances arousal, which facilitates dominant responses.

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 Factors for Arousal in the Presence of Others

Evaluation apprehension.

Distraction. Mere presence.

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 Evaluation Apprehension

• Individuals’ concern for how others are evaluating them.

• Enhancement of dominant responses is strongest when people think
they are being evaluated.
• People perform some well-learned behaviors best without overthinking
them.
• Self-consciousness decreases performance

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 Driven by Distraction

When individuals wonder how co-actors are doing or how an audience is

reacting, they become distracted.
• Co-actors: Co-participants working individually on a noncompetitive
activity.
• This conflict between paying attention to others and paying attention
to the task overloads the cognitive system, causing arousal.

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 Mere Presence

Mere presence of others produces some arousal even without evaluation

apprehension or arousing distraction.
• Most runners are energized when running with someone else, even
one who neither competes nor evaluates.

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 Implications of Social Facilitation Theory

An example of a good theory

• Help confirm and modify the theory
• Guide new exploration
• Suggest practical actions-educated guess

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 Why people form and join groups?

• Functional perspective
• Interpersonal attraction

Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments,

interact with and influence one another and perceive one
another as ‘us.’

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 Which one is a group?

Five people waiting at the same corner for a bus.

People attending a worship service.
The Spice Girls Fan Club.
The students in a seminar class.

The bus stop: This is a collection of individuals; they need not interact or
influence one another in any way.
Worship: Do the members interact? Are they interdependent? Do they
affect one another?
Fan club: If the members never see or interact with one another, then
they are not a group.
Seminar class: Assuming the students are not merely an audience to a
lecturer, this is a group.

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 Shutz (1958)

• Inclusion (need for affiliation)

• Control (need for power)
• Affection (need to establish open/positive relations with others, being
liked)

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

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 .

Hierarchy of
Maslow’s Needs
.
Self-
actualization

Esteem

Love, belongingness

SelfSafeSafety
Safety

Physiological
Semra F. Aşcıgil, 2018

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