Meaning
Social facilitation is the tendency for people to be aroused into better performance on simple task.Tasks at which they are expert or that have become autonomous when under the eye of others, rather than while they are alone (audience effect), or when they are working alongside other people (coaction effect).
Definition
Complex tasks (or tasks at which people are not skilled), however, are often performed in an inferior manner in such situations. This effect has been demonstrated in a variety of species. In humans, it is strongest among those who are most concerned about the opinions of others, and when the individual is being watched by someone he or she does not know, or cannot see well.
Types & Advantage of Social Facilities
The earliest published research on social facilitation was conducted by Norman Triplett in 1898. Triplett observed that among bicycle racers, the presence of other cyclists tended to increase performance, leading to faster race times. Research on social facilitation progressed slowly over the next few decades as the presence of others seemed to increase performance in some situations, and decrease it in other situations.
In 1965, Robert Zajonc breathed new life into social facilitation research by accounting for the previously unexplained dual nature of the phenomenon. According to Zajonc, the presence of others serves as a source of arousal. Arousal increases the likelihood of an organism making habitual or well learned responses. This improves performance at simple tasks and impairs performance at complex or difficult tasks (see Yerkes-Dodson Law). Zajonc demonstrated this effect in several different species, including laboratory rats and cockroaches.
More recently, Baron (1986) proposed an alternative view of social facilitation, one that is based on attention and distraction. He suggested that task performance is dependent upon the number of cues or distractions present in the situation. Today, most social psychologists believe that social facilitation in humans is influenced by both arousal (as in Zajonc's theory) and cognitive processes (such as distraction, and also evaluation apprehension).
