Social Facilitaion

By : Lukman Nul Hakim

I. PROBLEM

To study the effect of social support on performance.

II. INTRODUCTION

Individual performance in influenced by the presence of others, this phenomenon is called social facilitation. Worman Triplett (1898) he study circle racers, when together they perform better than alone. Then he conducted it in experiment. It was the first lab for social psychology. Children were asked to scroll fissing hook, and he found that the children scroll it faster when they are in group rather than when they are alone. At first triplet thought that this phenomenon because of competition, but then he theoriezed that the existence of others give extra energy facilitating the performance.
Dassiel (1930) tested this theory, he found that this phenomenon is not only by a competition, even when there is no competition the performance increased. Allport (1924), Baron, Kerr, Miller (1992), found the opposite, the presence of others decrease the performance (Hindrance). Zanjonc conducted many studies, he suggest that pressure of others generate our general level of emotional arousal as indicated in heart rate, respiration, and hormonal activity. It influences the performance in two ways. The arousal facilitates the learning. When the task is already trained the performance will increased but if the task is new the performance decrease, the context is the presence of other.
Why is there arousal? Cottel (1972) it is because are apprehensive about how others are appraising and evaluating. Strube, Mice &Finch (1981) he tested on jogger in group 1, experimenter one’s friend ‘staring’ the jogger, but the group 2 didn’t pay attention to the jogger. And the result was the jogger perform better when he was ‘watch’ rather than when he was alone.

Early Theorist
Early sociologist and psychologists took note of the apparent fact that individual behavior is facilitated in several ways when people act in the presence of others. For example, Munsterberg (1914) found that when he presented two cards containing almost equal number of dots in a circular field and asked individuals to judge which card contained the greater number of dots, more accurate judgements were expressed in groups than by individual judging alone. Similarly, jennes conducted studies of the ability of people to guess the number of beans contained in a jar and found that when people had opportunity to discuss their their estimates with others, more accurate judgements were expressed. Since both of these investigators ignored the possibility that bandwagon effects might occur as a function of individual inclinations to go along with the majority on such estimates, the notion of group mind lent itself readily as a way of describing these observations. It was assumed that in groups, individual function is enhanced by the effects of the superordinate group mind. While it is true that the presence of other people does seem to bring about marked changes in an individual’s performance of various activities, the fiction of a group mind does not explain these differences. One must explore the effect of others as social stimulus forces in order to understand such changes in behavior.
Extending some early investigations by Moede (1920) and Triplet(1897), Floyd Allport conducted a series of investigations between 1916 and 1920 in which he compared the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks when they performed alone with the performance of people doing the same tasks in the presence of others (Allport, 1920, 1924).
III. METHOD

HYPOTHESIS
Hypothesis Alternative
The presence of others influence the speed of subject in arranging puzzle significantly.

Hypothesis Null
The presence of others influence the speed of subject in arranging puzzle significantly.

Independent Variable : the presence of others
Variation 1: presence of other
Variation 2: non presence of other

Dependent Variable : The speed in arranging the puzzle.
Secondary variable :
· Level difficulty of the puzzle
· Level of intelligence of the subject
· Laboratory condition
· Age of the subject
· Gender
Operationalitation of IV :
The presence of other around the subject on the conduction of experiment in arranging puzzle.

Operationalization of DV :
The speed in arranging the puzzle. The duration of time needed by subject in arranging the puzzle piece into a complete figure, which is count in minutes.

Subjects Preliminaries

SUBJECT 1
Name : Yunita Ramadhana
Gender : Female
Age : 23 years old
Educational background : MA (Prev) English JMI
Nationality : Indonesian

SUBJECT 2
Name : A. Fatih Syuhud
Gender : Male
Age : 33 years old
Educational background : Phd Islamic Studies JMI
Nationality : Indonesian

SUBJECT 3
Name : Zulfitri
Gender : Female
Age : 23 years old
Educational background : MA (Prev) English
Nationality : Indonesian

SUBJECT 4
Name : Khairurrazi
Gender : Male
Age : 29 years old
Educational background : Phd Arabic Aligarh (AMU)
Nationality : Indonesian

Preliminary Set Up
All the puzzle pieces are pull out from the template, and make them disorder in such a way that each related piece is not close one to another.

Instruments
Stowatch
Puzzle
Laboratorium

Actual Procedure
a. Rapport formation, a brief conversation was held with subject to make subject feel comfortable with the experimental situation.
b. Give the instruction.
c. Give the tasks.
d. After the experiment was over experimenter record the time taken by the subject to finish it.
e. Asking bio-data.
f. Thanking the subject

IV. RESULT AND INTERPRETATION

Summary data


SUBJECT
START
FINISH
DURATION
Absence of others
SUBJECT 1
4.55 pm
5.25 pm
30
SUBJECT 2
5.30 pm
6.10 pm
40
Presence of others
SUBJECT 2
6.30 pm
7.05 pm
35
SUBJECT 3
7.15 pm
8.08 pm
50


Calculation

ABSENCE OF OTHER
Subject X X2
1 30 900
2 40 1600
Na=2 SXa=70 SXa2=2500

Mean a= SXa/n = 70/2 = 35
Ssa = SXa2 – (SXa)2/n
= 2500 – (4900)/2
= 2500 – 2450 = 50

PRESENCE OF OTHER
Subject X X2
1 35 1225
2 50 2500
Nb=2 SXb=70 SXb2=2500

Mean b= SXb/n = 85/2 = 42.5
Ssa = SXb2 – (SXb)2/n
= 3725 – (7225)/2
= 3725 – 3612.5 = 112.5

t = 35 – 42.5
112.5 + 50 1 + 1
(2-1) (2-1) 2 2

= -75 = -7.5 = -0.5882
162.5 12.75

Not Significantt = 0.59 < 12.706 (LOS 0.05)
0.59 , 63.657 (LOS 0.01)


Conclusion
There is no significance difference between subject one and subject two in arranging puzzle pieces. So that the Null hypothesis (Ho) is accepted and Research Hypothesis (Ha) is rejected.
V. INTERPRETATION AND DISCUSSION

From the score calculation we can see that there is mean difference, wherein the subject who performs with the presence of other get higher mean than subject who perform in the absence of other. But the result of the t test calculation show that the level of significance on degree of freedom 0.05 and 0.01 shows that the result is not significant.
Thus, we can conclude that there is no significant difference between subject who perform with and without the presence of other in speed in arranging the puzzle pieces.

DISCUSSION
The experiment is in fact not accordance with the experiment of zajonc. Experimenter conclude that this result come out due to several reason, namely :
The amount of sample is not representative.
There might be intelligence difference in all subject.
The personality difference, some of the subject seems to be ‘slow’, not in the sense of stupid but his/her body movement is slow in nature.

For further experiment we suggest to improve in some points :
First we should control the intelligence of the subject, because I assume that it plays a critical role in arranging puzzle piece.
Enlarge the amount of sample, so that the sample can be representative and the result might become significant.