The combination of perception of other individuals and exogenous manipulation of arousal enhances social facilitation as an aftereffect: re-examination of Zajonc’s drive theory

Abstract

Zajonc’s drive theory postulates that arousal enhanced through the perception of the presence of other individuals plays a crucial role in social facilitation (Zajonc, 1965). Here, we conducted two experiments to examine whether the elevation of arousal through a stepping exercise performed in front of others as an exogenous factor causes social facilitation of a cognitive task in a condition where the presence of others does not elevate the arousal level. In the main experiment, as an “aftereffect of social stimulus,” we manipulated the presence or absence of others and arousal enhancement before participants conducted the primary cognitive task. The results showed that the strongest social facilitation was induced by the combination of the perception of others and arousal enhancement. In a supplementary experiment, we manipulated these factors by adding the presence of another person during the task. The results showed that the effect of the presence of the other during the primary task is enough on its own to produce facilitation of task performance regardless of the arousal enhancement as an aftereffect of social stimulus. Our study therefore extends the framework of Zajonc’s drive theory in that the combination of the perception of others and enhanced arousal as an “aftereffect” was found to induce social facilitation especially when participants did not experience the presence of others while conducting the primary task.

Does social presence or the potential for interaction reduce social gaze in online social scenarios? Introducing the “live lab” paradigm

“…Social presence, either actual or implied, has been shown to be important in modulating social gaze (Nasiopoulos, Risko, Foulsham, & Kingstone, 2015; Nasiopoulos, Risko, & Kingstone, 2015; Risko & Kingstone, 2011). In line with numerous studies reporting “mere presence” effects, whereby the presence of another individual is sufficient to influence participant performance in a range of tasks (e.g., Markus, 1978; Platania & Moran, 2001; Rajecki, Ickes, Corcoran, & Lenerz, 1977; Ukezono, Nakashima, Sudo, Yamazaki, & Takano, 2015; Zajonc, 1965). Gregory et al (2015) showed that if an onscreen social scene was viewed in real time via a webcam, participants looked less at the faces within it than when the same scene was viewed as a pre-recording.…”

“…Previous work has suggested that the reduction in social gaze observed when viewing others in real time may be due to the operation of the social norms of looking behaviour causing gaze avoidance of “real” people (Gregory et al, 2015). Certainly at the neural level, it would seem that viewing others in real time is a qualitatively different experience to viewing them as a pre-recording or photograph (Cavallo et al, 2015; Pönkänen et al, 2011; Redcay et al, 2010), and the social psychology literature has presented many studies showing the mere presence of another person can alter performance on a range of tasks (e.g., Markus, 1978; Platania & Moran, 2001; Rajecki et al, 1977; Ukezono et al, 2015; Zajonc, 1965). However, while this may well be the case, our results demonstrate that specifically in terms of social gaze during a real-time social scenario, it is the inability of the participant to interact with the stimulus rather than the lack of social presence which causes participants to increase the amount of attention allocated to the faces of those viewed onscreen.…”

The Dynamic of Infaq and Sadaqah: According to the Social Facilitation Theory

“…The involvement of companion, according to drive theory, leads to improvement of individual performance when dealing with activities, however not to mention also possible could lower individual behavioral performance [9] [10].…”

A Qualitative Inquiry on the Behavior of English Major Students Towards Social Media Distractions

“…Correspondingly, Distraction-Conflict Theory by Zajonc (1965), as cited by Ukezono et al (2015), has been used to support this quest. To be specific, this theory elaborates on the role of other things (second task or distractor) in pivotally affecting the focus of the subject toward its primary task (Sanders, Baron, & Moore, 1978;Baron, 1986;Leung, 2015;Brooks, Longstreet, & Califf, 2017).…”