PSYCO241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Deindividuation, Social Loafing
3 Apr 2016
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Presence of others tends to improve performance. Social facilitation effect: being in front of an audience creates arousal and arousal enhances the dominant response. Dominant response: one"s most common and natural response in that situation, usually a very well-learned behaviour. Dominant response usually not appropriate because it requires something more complex. If you have people cheering for you at home, it makes it easier for you to win. Why does the presence of others increase arousal: evaluation apprehension. We feel like we are being evaluated by others which increases anxiety and arousal: distraction. The presence of others distracts us from what we are doing. We have a goal of completing a task but being observed by others distracts us and creates frustration (which is a form of arousal: mere presence. The mere presence of people creates arousal. This should be applied to both humans and non-humans then.
