Sports Psychology and Social Facilitation - Essay Example

Psychology Laboratory Report Lab Social Facilitation Social facilitation is a phenomenon by which peer or social pressure enhances or deteriorates a person's ability to perform a task. The level of expertise and confidence that a person possesses in a task would ultimately determine the result. The presence of other people could either motivate or deteriorate performance of a person (Guerin, 1993). If one is well-versed with a task, the presence of a peer or an audience motivates him or her to accomplish a task more efficiently. On the contrary, executing an unfamiliar or tough task would become more complicated in the presence of an audience. The presence of other people would naturally make a person aware of his or her surrounding and take a person to an aroused state of mind (Allport, 1924). This could turn into a motivating environment and drive better performance, provided the person in confident and good in what he or she is doing. However, if the person is not sure of his or her abilities, it could also very well turn out to be an anti-climax as the presence of people would worsen the level of confidence and eventually degenerate the performance of the individual. The concept of social facilitation becomes all the more important when it comes to sports. Since, every sport in the world has an audience, it is imperative that the athlete should be mentally geared to face the audience. In the highly competitive world of mind games, psychological toughness is of Herculean importance. Confidence is a factor that separates the great from the good and it comes with practice and self-belief. Hence, a good performer can be made to do perform better by introducing motivational factors like cheerleaders. If a person is lacking in skill, it can always be made up through hard work and training. However, if this lag is coupled with the pressure of performing under an audience, it will only make things worse (Watt & Ramakers, 2003). Hence, such an individual needs to practice alone at first, in the absence of an audience to boost up confidence levels and to instill faith in his or her own abilities. The next step would be to mentally train and prepare to cope with the pressure of playing in the presence of an audience. A person lacking mental grit needs to put it a lot of effort to face his or her worst fear which is more often than not, failure. If one can overcome this fear, half the battle is won. This process of mentally tuning up would also involve external as well as internal stimuli. The role of external stimulus is usually played by the coach and self-motivation does the rest of the job. A t-test was conducted to understand this phenomenon of social facilitation. A t-test is usually performed to compare and analyse the performance results of two groups. A group of six individuals, comprising of both men and women were asked to participate in an event. The first set of readings was taken with all participants competing alone as individuals. Then, they were made to participate together as a team. The results obtained from this exercise were also tabulated. A rather interesting trend was observed throughout the course of this test. It was observed that all of them took more time to finish the event when they were co-acting. This could be directly inferred from the values of mean and standard deviation in both cases. The mean time while the group was co-acting was 231 seconds compared to a mere 98.6 seconds in the case of individual competition. The standard deviation figures too indicated a similar trend. Usually, standard deviation is used to determine the degree of variation. In the case of individual competition, the standard deviation was 23.8 and it was 120.6 while the participants were co-acting. This gives a clear indication of social facilitation playing a strong impact on all the individuals present in the group. All the participants performed better when they were competing as individuals. However, their performance was found to deteriorate when they were co-acting. This would essentially mean that all of them cracked under the pressure to perform. The inadequacy in confidence combined together with the pressure to do well against each other, which ultimately affected their performance. Lab - 2 Group Dynamics Group dynamics is one of the oldest disciplines of psychology. It is a common fact that people behave differently when they are in the presence of other people. It essentially means an individual is strongly influenced by the surrounding group of individuals. It is also quite natural for people to form groups, as it gives them a sense of psychological security and happiness. Individuals in a group may act in such a way so as to please the others in the group, so as to maintain a cordial relationship with the people in the group. While working as a group, understanding of the principles of group dynamics becomes indispensable. There are a lot of positives while working in a group. A lot of sharing and human bonding is developed in a group. Hence, this phenomenon is otherwise referred to as social dynamics (Ewert & Heywood, 1991). Exchange of invaluable knowledge and thoughts will also effectively take place. Some people lead a group and the rest follow putting aside their personal views. This sense of leadership is instinctive for some and induced for others. The others in the group, more often than not, voluntarily or involuntarily agree to the leader's opinion. So, in the true sense of it, the decisions of the group mostly swing in favour of the leader. The logical reasoning of the individual takes a serious hit in a group environment. Members in a group sometimes take certain decision that they would not taken as individuals. Hence, the decision making process is affected by group dynamics to a great degree. Influencing an influential person in a group would mean obtaining the consent of the entire group. Hence, the influential person or leader of the group needs to posses skills like decision making and problem solving. There must be constant communication in between the members of the team to strengthen the unity of a team. When the ideas of all the members of a group are heard, it promotes healthy group dynamics. A group consisting of such people would always work towards accomplishing a positive goal. The leader of the group also has to take up the responsibility of keeping the group together to ensure the existence of harmony (Kerr & Gass, 1995). A good group leader needs to act in a timely manner and make decisions, keeping in mind the interest of the entire group. Politicians, for ages have been well known for taking advantage of group dynamics to attract mass appeal. Even, marketing is concentrated to specific demographic group with group dynamics in mind. Group dynamics also plays a crucial role in sport and other group activities (Ringer, 2002). The desert survival camp was is one such place where group dynamics play an exceedingly important role. In such an environment, resources are scarce and the resources that really matter are human resources. The chief problems included lack of water, fatigue caused due to continuous walking and the heat radiated by the scorching sun. All the people in the group had to keep their minds and bodies intact, in order to survive the gruelling phase. In such a mind-taxing surrounding, constant encouragement from one another was quite indispensable. The desert creatures were also a source of disturbance to the psychological makeup of the members in the camp. Hence, it became more important for people to interact to overcome their fears. Especially, when someone was hurt, the kind words of fellow team members did most of the healing. However, there were certain disputes which were immediately resolved. The group leader played the all-important role of keeping the group together by mitigating crisis situations and making crucial decisions with respect to rest stops and so on. The group leader was also responsible for keeping the spirits of the group at high levels. Hence, positive group dynamics exhibited by all the members of the group was instrumental in the safe completion of the survival camp. Lab - 3 Concentration Concentration is a state of mind wherein all the mental energy is focussed on a particular activity. When complete attention is diligently paid to a certain task, the outcome would certainly be positive (Dumont, 1918). However, this cognitive state can not be easily attained by an untrained mind. There are a lot of exercises such as meditation and breathing exercises for improving concentration levels. If a person is able to concentrate as and when he or she pleases, it is a sign of mastering one's own mind. People with the ability to tame and train their minds would be able to easily accomplish their goals. This success can be attributed their effective and efficient time utilization. A small exercise was carried out to gauge an individual's level of concentration. A paper displaying a grid consisting of numbers from zero to ninety nine in random order was given. Everyone was informed to start ticking the numbers in proper numerical order and a timeframe of sixty seconds was given. The same activity was carried out again to ensure a consistent result. The exercise was evaluated by the counting the number of figures ticked in numerical order. The results were 10 and 11 in the first and second attempts respectively. Kinaesthetic skills According to Wordweb (2006), kinaesthesis is the ability to feel movements of the limbs and body. A simple activity was performed by a group of three consisting of A, B and C. First of all, C was blindfolded to ensure that C is not able to visually recognise neither A nor B. Now, A and B were asked to touch the back of C's hand. While touching C, both A and B were asked to say their names. The same activity was repeated six times to enable C's mind to synchronise with the touch of A and B. Now, A and B were asked to randomly touch the back of C's hand from a neutral position so that C would not be able to recognize them by direction. C was asked to keep track of the number of touches made by A and B. A total of twelve touches were made by A and B. C would have used strategies like sensing the texture of the skin and the intensity applied while being touched to differentiate between A and B. C was able to get seven out of the twelve touches right and reflects a fair kinaesthetic ability. This ability would help athletes to communicate non-verbally with their team mates. Visual Exercise Visual exercise is commonly used to improve mental visualisation skills and concentration levels of an individual. A fun activity was performed to by a pair consisting of A and B. First, B was asked to take a mental picture of A. Then B was asked to turn away from A with closed eyes. A was asked to make four changes in physical appearance. After this, B was asked to identify the changes made in A's appearance. A was able to identify the changes in B's appearance by comparing the image seen in his eye with the image stored in his mind. However, B was able to get only two out of the four changes right, indicating mediocre visualisation skills. Eye accessing cue Eye assessing cue techniques have been around for a while now. This technique helps to gauge the thought process inside a person's mind by observing his or her eyes. When various stimuli like sight, sound and taste are sensed by the brain, they reflected by the movements of the eye. It is common for people to visualise things inside their minds during the thought process. Using these signs shown by the eyes to read one's mind is known as calibration of eye accessing cues (Honest Abe's NLP Emporium, 2006). A was asked to observe another person's eyes to identify and analyse the internal thought process. A was able to successfully calibrate both cues. When the eyes moved up and towards the right, then it was identified as visual construction. During the second instance, the eyes moved from sideways and towards the left, which indicated auditory remembering. A was easily able to differentiate between constructing and remembering, by observing the direction in which the eyes moved. In most cases, a right-handed person's eyes moves towards the left while remembering and towards the right while constructing. Reference List: Allport, F. 1924. Social Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Dumont, T.Q. 1918. Power of Concentration. Chicago, IL: Yoga Publication Society. Ewert, A., & Heywood, J. (1991). Group development in the natural environment: Expectations, outcomes, and techniques. Environment and Behavior, 23, 592-615. Guerin, B., & Innes, J. 1993. Social Facilitation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Heller, M., & Schiff, W. 1991. The Psychology of Touch. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Honest Abe's NLP Emporium. (Feb. 24, 2006). Is the NLP Eye Accessing Cues Model Really Valid. Retrieved April 23, 2006, from http://www.bradburyac.mistral.co.uk/nlpfax09.htm. Kerr, P. J., & Gass, M. A. (1995). A group development model for adventure education. In K. Warren, M. Sakofs, & J. S. Hunt (Eds.) The theory of experiential education (pp. 285-296). Ringer, T. M. (2002). Group action: The dynamics of groups in therapeutic, educational and corporate settings. London: Jessica Kingsley. Watt, C., & Ramakers, P. (2003). Experimenter Effects with a Remote Facilitation of Attention Focusing Task: A Study with Multiple Believer and Disbeliever Experimenters. The Journal of Parapsychology, 67. Wordweb Online. (2006). Retrieved April 23, 2006, from http://www.wordwebonline.com/search.plw=kinesthetics. Appendix - Results 1. Social facilitation statistics Alone Co-acting Name Time (s) Name Time (s) Laura 114 Laura 340 Gemma 91 Gemma 146 Miriam 86 Miriam 178 Daniel 140 Daniel 420 Sam 77 Sam 117 Alex 84 Alex 185 Mean 98.6 - 231 SD 23.8 - 120.6 2. Concentration Test Result: 10 and 11. 3. Kinaesthetic skill test Result: C got 7 out of 12 touches right. 4. Visual Exercise test Result: B identifies 2 out of the 4 changes in appearance made by A. Read More