Social facilitation and social loafing Video Lecture - UPSC

Voiceover: Imagine you're
in front of a group of
people and you're about to give a
presentation.
You look out at the crowd and you see
dozens of people,
and they're all looking at you, waiting
for you to give your presentation.
How will the presence of others affect
your behavior?
Will it help your performance, or will it
hinder it?
According to the concept of social
facilitation, the presence of others will
increase
the likelihood that the most dominant
response
for a particular behavior will be shown.
So what does that mean?
Well, first, the dominant response refers
to
the response that's most likely to occur.
So in the context of your presentation it
means that if you
practice your presentation for hours on
end, you really know your topic in
and out, and you generally make very few
mistakes when you're practicing
it, then the presence of others will lead
you to perform very well.
It kind of gives you an edge and motivates
you to perform well.
However if you haven't practiced your
presentation at all,
and even if you did a couple times, and
you
made a lot of mistakes, then the presence
of
others will probably make you perform more
poorly than usual.
In other words it'll kind of exacerbate,
your mistakes.
So why does this happen?
Well, the presence of others increases
your
arousal, or your general physiological or
psychological excitement.
Things like your heart rate increasing,
you might be breathing quicker than usual.
It's, it's the activation of your
autonomic nervous system essentially.
And, this is simply known as nervous
energy.
Your increased energy or arousal leads
to likelihood of the dominant response
occurring.
So whether the dominant response is
correct or accurate depends on how easy
or difficult a task is, and how well
you've learned it or rehearsed it.
So the presence of others will likely
improve your performance on simple tasks,
or tasks that you've learned well over a
course of time, and
it'll hinder your performance on difficult
tasks or tasks that you haven't practiced.
So some argue that the increased arousal
only takes place when
a person's efforts are evaluated, since
the situation becomes more high stakes.
So what happens when your behavior isn't
evaluated?
Well in the context of the presentation,
example, if you're talking about your
presentation concepts with a group of your
close friends, who wouldn't be evaluating
you necessarily, you may not have
any nervous energy, and your performance
wouldn't
be effected by the presence of others
because you're very comfortable with them.
But what if you're presenting in a group
or to th, the intended audience?
Well, as anyone who has ever given a group
presentation knows, that's when things can
go a little south.
When a group collectively works toward a
common goal and individuals aren't
monitored or
evaluated, something called social loafing
is likely
to occur, which is a separate concept.
So social loafing is a tendency to put
forth less effort
when working on a group task, if the
individual contributions aren't evaluated.
And if you've ever worked on a
group project before you've probably
experienced this.
Sometimes there's that one person, or few
people in the group, who don't wanna
contribute
anything, because they probably figured
that, well, you
know, the group will get it done anyway.
In other words, it's a group-produced
reduction in individual effort.
So why does this happen?
Well there are several reasons.
First, individuals may see their
contribution as unessential to success,
so they may be less concerned about being
personally evaluated.
Or they may be trying to guard against
being the person who does all the work.
So our presentation example, groups
experiencing social loafing would be
less productive, put forth less effort and
generally perform poorly.
Now social loafing can be reduced by
making the task more
challenging, like adding a new component
to the presentation or separating the
performance of individuals in the group,
like giving each person their
own grade, as opposed to giving the entire
group the same grade.
Or you can make the performance of each
person essential for success, like if
each individual in the group had their own
piece to work on for the presentation.
So, to return to original question: does
the presence of others help or hinder
performance?
Well, the answer is: it depends.