PSYC 308 Chapter 12: Ch. 12 Readings
Document Summary
A group is a "collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree. Wanting to be in groups is fundamentally our social nature. Triplett noticed cyclists were fastest when competed directly against someone on track at same time - believed presence of others facilitate human performance. > triplett; 40 kids in lab and turn fishing reel as fast as they could, 6 trials. Found tended to reel faster when in presence of another child engaged in same activity -> social facilitation. Same effects obtained when others weren"t doing same thing but present as audience of passive observers. Same effect observed in vast number of animal species indicated phenomenon is quite general and fundamental. Zajonc"s theory: argued that the presence of otheres, even the presence of others tends to facilitate performance on simple or well-learned tasks, but hinders performance on difficult or novel tasks.
