Group behaviour: individual and group performance

Psychology A2 · Organisational Psychology. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.

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The idea

Social facilitation is a change in a person's performance caused by the presence of others: usually better on simple or well-learned tasks and worse on new or complex ones. Social loafing is the drop in individual effort when people work in a group and their contributions are pooled.

Three explanations are used. Drive theory (Zajonc) says other people raise arousal, which strengthens the dominant response. Evaluation apprehension says the arousal comes from fear of being judged. Social impact theory (Latané) says pressure is shared out among group members.

Managers also monitor output. Electronic performance monitoring uses technology to do this, and Claypoole and Szalma (2019) tested its effect on attention.

Rules to remember

Dominant response: the most likely response. It is correct for a well-learned task and often wrong for a new one.
Social impact depends on the strength, immediacy and number of the people present; in a team the pressure from one manager is divided among the members.
Loafing falls when each person's output can be identified and is recorded.
Earley (1993): managers from China, Israel and the USA worked alone, with an in-group or with an out-group.
Earley's result: collectivist managers (China, Israel) did best with an in-group; individualist US managers did best alone.
Claypoole and Szalma, experiment 1: a laboratory vigilance task, with or without electronic monitoring.
Their result: monitored participants detected more of the critical signals, as social facilitation predicts.

Common mistake

Students say an audience always improves performance. It helps only when the dominant response is correct, so experts improve and beginners get worse. Also, mere presence (drive theory) is different from fear of being judged (evaluation apprehension).

Worked example

Six cleaners share one large hall and only the team's result is inspected. The supervisor notices that each one works less hard than when cleaning a room alone. Which theory explains this, and what would reduce it?

Effort falls in a group with a pooled result, so this is social loafing.
Social impact theory: the supervisor's pressure is divided among six people, so each feels less of it.
Loafing falls when individual contributions can be identified.

Answer: Social impact theory explains the loafing; giving each cleaner a marked area that is inspected separately would reduce it.

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