PSYC 241 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Social Loafing, Group Polarization, Social Facilitation

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 241
• Professor: Tara Mac Donald

Document Summary

Group: two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and i(cid:374)flue(cid:374)(cid:272)e o(cid:374)e a(cid:374)other a(cid:374)d per(cid:272)ei(cid:448)e o(cid:374)e a(cid:374)other as (cid:862)us(cid:863) The presence of others improves the speed with which people do simple multiplication problems and cross out designated letters. Improves accuracy with which people preform simple motor tasks. Social facilitation: (1) original meaning: the tendency of people to perform simple or well-learned tasks better when others are present (2) current meaning the strengthening of dominant (prevalent, likely) responses owing to the presence of others. The presence of others diminishes efficiency at learning nonsense syllables, completing a maze, and performing complex multiplication problems. Increased arousal enhances performance on easy tasks for which the most likely (cid:862)do(cid:373)i(cid:374)a(cid:374)t(cid:863) respo(cid:374)se is (cid:272)orre(cid:272)t. On harder tasks people then become anxious and do worse. Sometimes the arousal and self-conscious attention created by a large audience interferes even with well-learned automatic behaviours such as speaking. Given extreme pressure we are vulnerable to choking.