Social Facilitation Concepts

• Groups consist of two or more individuals who interact for longer than a few moments, influence each other, and perceive one another as "us"
• Groups help us meet different human needs, like affiliation, achievement, and social identity

Social Facilitation

• It explores how we are affected by the presence of others
• The presence of others can affect behavior and cognition, with crowding being one aspect
• Arousal in the company of others depends on emotional state. If negative, it can hinder performance
• The original meaning of social facilitation is the tendency to perform simple or known tasks better when others are around
• In many cases, the presence of others boosts performance on simple tasks, yet impairs performance on difficult ones
• Social facilitation is also an explanation for home advantage in sports
• Home teams win about 6 in 10 games, especially in team-oriented sports
• Another contributing factor of social facilitation is that people around help you to perform
• Other possible factors for social facilitation are officiating bias, travel fatigue, familiarity with home context, and crowd noise

Crowding

• It refers to the influence of many others
• Others’ presence can increase the number of people in a group
• Large audiences may interfere with well-learned, automatic behaviors.
• The presence of others can intensify positive or negative reactions
• Being close to others magnifies liking for friendly people and disliking for unfriendly ones
• Fun is shared with others and can be more energizing
• Crowding has a similar effect to being observed as it enhances arousal

Why Arousal Occurs

• Dominant repsonses are strongestest when being evaluated
• Evaluation apprehension: concern for how others perceive is a factor
• Distraction from co-actors or the audience can create arousal
• The presence of others can cause innate social arousal

Social Loafing

• It occurs when individuals exert less effort in a group.
• Class group projects exemplify this when every student gets the same grade
• The collective effort in a group is often less than the sum of each individual's efforts
• Also refers to the tendency for those working towards a common goal to put in less effort
• The more people in a group, the less effort
• Free riders benefit from the group but give little in return
• Employees are more productive in group experiments when their individual performance is posted
• When the task is challenging, appealing, or involving, people are less likely to loaf in groups
• Groups loaf less when members are connected or feel indispensable to the group

Deindividuation

• It is when people lose their sense of self in groups, and arousal and diffused responsibility combine
• Acts range from a mild lessening of restraint to impulsive self-gratification to destructive social explosions
• It is the suppression of self-awareness and evaluation apprehension
• Deindividuation arises in group situations that foster responsiveness to either good or bad group norms
• The larger the group, the more its members lose self-awareness and are willing to commit atrocities
• Attention is focused on the situation
• Anonymity makes people less self-conscious, but more group-conscious
• Arousing people while distracting them has been shown to increase likelihood of aggressive outbursts by groups

Diminished Self-Awareness

• The reduction of self-awareness within groups
• These experiences tend to disconnect behavior and attitudes
• Self-awareness involves being in a self-conscious state where attention is focused on oneself, making people more sensitive to their own attitudes and dispositions
• Self-aware individuals have increased self-control and avoid cheating
• Circumstances decreasing self-awareness can increase deindividuation, whereas those that increase self-awareness decrease deindividuation

Group Polarization

• Concerns how groups intensify our opinions
• When groups strengthens the average tendency.
• Risk shift is not universal, some dilemmas lead people to be cautious after a discussion

Group Polarization Experiments

• When voters increased dislike of Donald Trump after a discussion
• Japanese students judgments as jury in a traffic case
• Judgments of political speech videos
• French students dislike of someone after discussion of negative impressions.
• Polarization of group that share same attitude
• High prejudice will be increased prejudice groups and vice-versa.
• Group polarization occurs in the everyday life.
• In schools, the “accentuation effect."

Explaining Group Polarization

• Informational Influence results from accepting evidence about reality
• Arguments and active participation matter
• Social comparison: evaluating one's opinions and abilities by comparing oneself with others.
• Pluralistic ignorance: a false impression of what most other people are thinking or feeling, or how they are responding.

Group Decision-Making

• Team spirit in work groups
• Groupthink: the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant
• Groupthink causes amiable conversations, group of the group from dissenting viewpoints, and directive leaders

Symptoms of Groupthink

• Groups overestimate their group's might and right
• Illusion of invulnerability.
• Unquestioned belief in the group's morality.
• Rationalization
• Stereotyped view of opponent
• Conformity pressure.
• Self-censorship
• Illusion of unanimity
• Mindguards, protect others over groups effectiveness

Groupthink Prevention

• Be impartial.
• Encourage critical evaluation.
• Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air differences.
• Welcome critiques from outside experts and associates.
• Before implementing, call a second-chance meeting to air any lingering doubts.
• Group performance is enhanced through group and solitary brainstorming
• Group members communicate by writing
• Electronic brainstorming is incorporated

Minority Influence

• Determinants of minority include consistency, self-confidence, and defection.
• There is minority slowness effect: tendency for people with minority to express low
• Consistency and perspective is important
• Lone defector from the majority is more persuasive
• Task leadership: organizes work, sets standards, and focuses on goals.
• Social leadership: builds teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers support.
• Transformational leadership: enabled by a leader's vision and inspiration, exerts significant influence.