PSYCH 7A Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Social Proof, Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram
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PSYCH 7A Full Course Notes
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The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another. Social facilitation - the tendency for people to perform better when in the presence of other people. Example: towler (1986) after a traffic light turns green, drivers take 15% less time to travel the first. 100 yards when another car is beside them at the intersection: however, the presence of others can instead cause people to perform more poorly on certain tasks! The presence of other people can also inhibit performance. Suggested that the presence of other people causes arousal: this arousal strengthens the most likely response, arousal makes us do easy/well-learned tasks well, arousal makes us do hard/less well-learned tasks poorly. For something simple that you are good at performance will probably be better doing it in front of a crowd. For something difficult and not very good at performance will likely be worse doing it in front of a crowd.
