Influence of the presence of others on individual performance - Essay Example

?Why does the presence of others improve individual performance in some situations but inhibit it in others? Discuss in relation to theories of social facilitation. Introduction Laying down brief history of Social Psychology, it was in the late 1800’s when the concepts of social loafing and social facilitation were introduced. However, the research with regard to Social Psychology began and continues up to the present. The U.S government has also been interested in the application of the Social Psychology concepts to its citizens. Throughout the twentieth century, Social Psychology has continued to grow and the result of all the researches held gave inspiration to people and has contributed to the understanding of social behavior and experiences. Social Psychology refers to the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of social behavior. It is a field of Psychology that renders the examinations how the thought, feelings, and the behavior are influence by others whether those people are physically present or not. However, it is also important to know how the Social Psychology differs from other disciplines. Social Psychology, most of the time was confused and associated with folk wisdom, sociology and personality psychology. Laying down the difference between Social Psychology and folk’s wisdom, Social Psychology employs scientific method and the empirical study of social phenomena while the folk wisdom relies on anecdotal observations and the interpretation is subjective. While Social Psychology focuses on the situation and the Social Psychologist are paying attention to the impact of the groups and social environment have on attitudes and behavior. Finally, it is mostly important to distinguish the difference between Social Psychology and Sociology considering the fact that the two have much resemblance. Sociology observes social behavior at a broad-based level and Sociologist are interested in the institutions and to the culture that influences Social Psychology. Psychologists focus on the situational variables that effects social behavior. Social Facilitation Social Facilitation refers to the tendency of people to do or perform better in the presence of other people. This means that whenever people are being watched by others, there is a strong tendency in doing the task better. This phenomenon gave way to the further research surrounding the Social Facilitation theory and its implications. Whether the task is simple or difficult, performance is merely affected in the presence of other people. The presence of other people enhances the performance in speed and accuracy of well-practiced task and most often degrade the performance of the less practice task. Occasionally, Social Facilitation has been attributed to the fact that there are also people susceptible to social influences and that they are inclined to be more affected by the presence of other people and observers. The importance of the Social Facilitation is manifested in social situations because this implies that the performance of people does not rely only on the abilities but have also been affected by the internal awareness of being evaluated while performing the task. The performance of people in the midst of others can be greatly affected by situation factors and the possibility is open to alter the result of the situation. The importance of being prepared with this kind of situation is seen especially performing under the evaluations. Situations like this are mostly seen in sports like in basketball or in any other sports having a big crowd that would evaluate the every action done by the players. Theories As the phenomenons have been observed along with the researches with regard to the Social Facilitation, number of theories comes up in trying to reason out and render explanation to Social Facilitation. Drive Theory is trying to give us an explanation that when a person is given a task that is new to him, he would have the tendency to be doing it well and carefully in front of the evaluators or observers. The reason to this is that the presence of others makes us concerned about what they would be thinking of us in relevance to our performance. However, this theory is also called activation theory that includes Alertness Theory, Monitoring Hypothesis, Challenge, and Threat Hypothesis. Under the Hypothesis Theory, people tends to be more alert because of being conscious while in the presence of other people and the alertness eventually causes them to perform better on the task. Evaluation performance theory would like to present to us that people are affected knowing being evaluated and judge and it is what merely affects them and not the number of people or those people that they think are evaluating them. The presence of others distracts them in doing their task. Nevertheless, if a person is confident enough with his ability, then watching him in the midst of the performance would make him perform well and in effect he is showing off. But if the performer lacks confidence, he would be constantly worrying about being evaluated. However, this theory is also called Evaluation Approach and this refers to the explanation that it is not the mere presence of the people around that increases the arousal and determination of the performer but rather to the fear of being evaluated. Distraction conflict theory shows that the presence of others in the midst of the task tends the performer to be more active and careful. The presence of others leads the ‘performer to arousal and to be more alert. The arousal in what we are doing is manifested in the presence of others. This theory is also considered as the Attention Theories, in further explanation with regard to this, the level of performance on the task is tantamount to the distractions in the environment that surrounds the task. This hypothesis explains that distractions are leading to arousal and the presence of others holds back the performance on difficult task and either improves or impedes in simple task. Conclusion At the present time, many different theories about why Social Facilitation are presented, many researches are initiated with regard to this phenomenon and how this things should be understand and interpreted, many Psychologist also followed suit but despite the big number of theories with regard to the topic, it is relevant to say that Psychologist are all striving hard to come up and present to the world an interpretation and realization that Social Facilitations is a help for us to be considered. References Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2008). Personality: Theory and research (10th edn). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Davy, G. (Ed.) (2004) Complete psychology. Oxon: Hodder and Stoughton. Hewstone, M., & Stroebe, W. (Eds.) (2001). Introduction to social psychology: A European perspective (3rd edition). Blackwell. Hogg, M. A., & Vaughan, G. M. (2008). Social psychology (5th edition). Harlow: Prentice-Hall. Read More