AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE DETERMINANTS OF SOCIAL FACILITATION

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of the presence of others on individual behavior in the social facilitation phenomenon, manipulating the following three factors, that is, the degree of response facility to the task, the number of others present and the form of the others' presence.
It was examined how these factors affect the behavior of individuals in both coaction and audience situation, at the same time the difference between the coaction effect and the audience effect was compared (Experiment I: coaction situation, Experiment II: audience situation).
Ss were 144 university students (The number of male and female subjects was 72, respectively).
Subject's task was to rearrange an alphabet sequence.
The main results were as follows.
1. In the facile task to respond, the number of correct responses increased in both coaction and audience situation, and especially for the coaction situation, the number of error responses decreased.
2. The difference of the effect based on the number of others present was not found in the coaction situation, but a tendency of the difference was found in audience situation.
3. Neither coaction nor audience situation produced a difference of performance based on the factor of a form of presence.
4. In the task facilitated, upon examining the number of correct responses over trials, the facilitation effect was observed especially in the first half of the trials.