PSY220H1 Lecture Notes - Robert Zajonc, Cockroach, Social Loafing
Document Summary
Intra-group refers to relations between members of one group, while inter-group refers to the relations between members of two different groups. Simply having other people around can influence our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. The presence of others does not have to be actual in order to exert influence; it can be implied or imagined. Triplett, who published the first study in social psychology (1898), studied social facilitation. Remember that he noted how the presence of other people influence behaviour; namely that children wound up their fishing rods faster if they went up against another child than when they went against a clock. From this experiment we can take away the idea that the presence of other people can improve our own performance. However, some research has shown that the presence of others can also degrade performance. Thus, the presence of others simply arouses people and there happen to be different degrees of arousal.
