Question 1

What do psychologists call the decrease in individual effort that occurs when people engage in a shared group activity?

Accepted Answer

Psychologists call the decrease in individual effort that occurs when people engage in a shared group activity "social loafing".

Question 2

What do psychologists call the extent to which group members think,act,and feel like a single entity?

Accepted Answer

Social integration refers to the extent to which group members think, act, and feel like a single entity, emphasizing unity and cohesion within the group.

Question 3

In one of the earliest social psychological experiments,Triplett (1898)had children wind fishing reels as quickly as they could.What did he find?

Accepted Answer

Triplett found that the children were faster when working next to another child rather than alone, suggesting the presence of others can enhance performance.

Question 4

Which of the following has been proposed to explain social facilitation?

Accepted Answer

Social facilitation is often explained by distraction, which can create attentional conflict. This means that the presence of others can create a distraction that causes people to pay more attention to their own performance, leading to either an improvement or a decline in performance depending on the task.

Question 5

Which of the following would most likely be described as a collective?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Which of the following would most likely...

Question 6

According to the theory of social facilitation,what effect should the presence of others have on someone who is performing a task?

Accepted Answer

According to the theory of social facilitation, the presence of others should improve performance on easy tasks as the arousal level increases and the task is simple enough to be executed well. However, the presence of others should impair performance on challenging tasks as the increased arousal level can lead to anxiety and distraction, thus hindering performance.

Question 7

What do psychologists call the tendency for the presence of other people to increase performance on easy tasks and impair performance on difficult tasks?

Accepted Answer

Psychologists call the tendency for the presence of other people to increase performance on easy tasks and impair performance on difficult tasks social facilitation. Social loafing refers to the tendency for people to exert less effort when working in a group, while group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make more extreme decisions than the initial inclinations of its members. Groupthink refers to the phenomenon where group members prioritize harmony and consensus over the critical evaluation of information.

Question 8

Zajonc's model for how the presence of others influences individual performance is known as social facilitation.In this case,what does "facilitation" refers to?

Accepted Answer

Facilitation in Zajonc's model refers to how the presence of others enhances the likelihood of the dominant response occurring, which means it makes the most likely response in a given situation more likely to happen, not necessarily improving performance on complex tasks or focusing ability.

Question 9

What effect will facilitation of the dominant response from increased arousal tend to have?

Accepted Answer

Facilitation of the dominant response due to increased arousal generally makes easy tasks easier because the individual is likely to perform a well-learned or simple task more efficiently. Conversely, it makes difficult tasks more challenging because the arousal can interfere with the processing needed for tasks that are complex or not well-learned.

Question 10

How do groups differ from collectives?

Accepted Answer

Groups typically involve more direct interaction among members, whereas collectives may not require such interaction.

Question 11

Martha and Janice both live in Vancouver.Martha lives in False Creek and Janice lives in the West End.In which of the following scenarios would they be most likely to consider themselves in the same group?

Accepted Answer

They are both playing softball and their teams are playing in a local tournament.

Question 12

What do psychologists call people who are engaged in a common enterprise but have little direct interaction?

Accepted Answer

Psychologists call people who are engaged in a common enterprise but have little direct interaction a "collective." A collective can refer to individuals who share a common goal or purpose but don't necessarily interact with each other on a personal level. Examples might include members of a political movement, fans of a sports team, or employees of a large company who work on different teams or in different departments.

Question 13

Vladimir,a basketball novice,makes about 70 percent of his free throws when practising alone.However,when playing with his friends,he only makes about 50 percent of his free throws.What is the most likely cause of this decrease?

Accepted Answer

Social facilitation explains how an individual's performance can change when others are watching. In Vladimir's case, his performance decreases when playing with friends, likely due to the pressure or anxiety of being observed, which is a common effect of social facilitation.

Question 14

Ingham (1974)asked participants to pull on a rope and found that participants pulled almost 20 percent harder when they thought they were pulling alone than when they thought they were part of a group.What does this example illustrate?

Accepted Answer

This example illustrates social loafing, which is the phenomenon where individuals exert less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone.

Question 15

Cottrell et al.(1968)found that dominant responses were no more frequent among people working in the presence of blindfolded others than among people working alone.Which theory of social facilitation is this finding consistent with?

Accepted Answer

The evaluation apprehension theory suggests that the presence of others leads to increased arousal only when they are perceived as evaluators. Since blindfolded others cannot evaluate, their presence does not increase dominant responses, consistent with this theory.

Question 16

Your psychology professor calls you in front of the class and asks you to answer practice exam questions in front of everyone.You find the questions to be easy.According to the model of social facilitation,how should you perform in front of the class compared to working on the questions alone?

Accepted Answer

According to the model of social facilitation, one tends to perform better when the task is well-practiced and the individual is confident, which is the case here as the questions are easy. Therefore, the individual should perform better in front of the class than when working on the questions alone.

Question 17

Consider the research of Ingham and colleagues (1974),in which blindfolded people were led to believe they were pulling a rope with others.What did the researchers find about the effort expended by those blindfolded participants?

Accepted Answer

Ingham and colleagues (1974) found that individuals who believed they were pulling a rope as part of a group did not pull as hard as those who thought they were pulling alone, demonstrating social loafing.

Question 18

Consider the research by Zajonc et al.(1969),in which cockroaches run in simple or complex mazes either alone,in pairs,or with an audience.Which explanation of social facilitation does this research provide support for?

Accepted Answer

The research by Zajonc et al. (1969) supports the mere presence theory of social facilitation, which suggests that the mere presence of others can enhance or impair performance on a task depending on the individual's level of arousal. The cockroaches in the study demonstrated improved maze-running performance in the presence of an audience, suggesting that the audience's mere presence heightened their arousal and facilitated their performance.

Question 19

According to Zajonc's mere presence hypothesis,what does social facilitation result from?

Accepted Answer

According to Zajonc's mere presence hypothesis, social facilitation occurs because the physical presence of others increases arousal, which in turn enhances the dominant response (i.e. the most likely or habitual response) to a given task. This can result in better performance on easy or well-learned tasks, but worse performance on difficult or novel tasks. The presence of others can also create social inhibition, where performance is worse in the presence of others due to anxiety, distraction, or other factors.

Question 20

What did Ringelmann's research in the 1880s demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Ringelmann's research demonstrated that people exert less effort in simple group tasks than they would if working alone, known as the "Ringelmann Effect".

Quiz 8: Group Processes