PSYC 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Social Facilitation, Social Loafing, Fishing Reel

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 215
• Professor: Julie Caouette

Document Summary

Wilson stated the psychological need to belong in humans" nature. A group is a collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree. Its members share intimacy, history or background, which enhances cohesion. There are degrees of dependence and so different degree of groupness . Social facilitation was initially a term for enhanced performance in the presence of others, and now is a broader term for the effect, positive or negative, of the presence of others on performances. Norman triplett (1898) designed an experiment to determine if the presence of others facilitates human performance, after observing that cyclists recorded faster times when competing against others than when racing alone against the clock. He assigned 40 children to turn around a fishing reel as fast as they could. He found faster time when the child was co-acting with another person.