Social Simplification/ Facilitation

 

Every person performs some of his tasks and activities either alone or in a group with other people. Therefore, it becomes very important to know how the presence or absence of others affects an individual's performance. In this regard, many experimental studies were conducted by psychologists which showed that the presence of others brings a positive increase in a person's work performance. This positive impact of the presence of others on a person's performance is known as 'social facilitation'.

Definition of social simplification

According to Kimball Young (1960), "Social simplification is defined as an increase in a person's response to someone's behaviour due to the presence of others."

According to Feldman (1985), “Social facilitation refers to a process in which the presence of others enhances performance.”

This transit was first discovered by Triplett (1898) while Allport (1920-24) gave the name social simplification and studied it experimentally in detail. In Allport's studies, subjects were made to perform tasks ranging from simple to complex. In one study, subjects were asked to write down on a piece of paper as many associations as they could think of for certain words. The subjects were asked to do this task in two different situations, alone and in the presence of two or more people. It was observed that alone Subjects in the group situation mentioned relatively more associations as compared to the no-condition situation. On this basis, Allport concluded that "In a group situation or in the presence of other people, a person's work performance is relatively more efficiently and better."

 

Thrust theory of social simplification or Zajonc's social simplification theory

In the field of social simplification, Robert Zajonc (1960-65) did a lot of experimental research on the basis of which he propounded the theory of social simplification. The fundamental postulate of this theory is that the presence of others increases the arousal level of the individual.

Zajonc believes that the presence of others sometimes improves work performance and sometimes worsens it. According to him, in such a situation of excitement, a person's performance can be of two types –

1.  In the first stage it may happen that a person's work performance improves in the presence of others. This work performance becomes better when the person's work is very accurate or the person is skilled in the work.

2. In the second stage it may happen that the presence of others reduces the person's work performance. This work performance decreases when the person has not learned the work well or makes many mistakes during the work. Both these facts can be understood from the following example-

For example, when a person learns to sing, he makes many mistakes in the beginning due to lack of skill. If at this stage he has to sing a song in front of others, he will make a lot of mistakes due to the presence of others because he is not yet very adept at singing. As a result, in this state he will experience stress and excitement due to the presence of others due to which his work performance will become weak and decrease. On the contrary, when he becomes adept at singing, he will not feel stressed in front of others, but will be inspired by the presence of others and will perform better. Some psychological experiments have been done to confirm Zajonc's theory in learning. In their experiment, Hunt and Hillary (1973) found that simple mazes took less time for subjects (students) to learn in the presence of others, whereas their colleagues (1982) found similar results in taking more time to learn complex mazes. Truth is the head of the theory. Therefore, in short it can be said that the presence of others has both positive and negative effects on a person's work performance. If the work to be done by a person is simple then the effect of the presence of others is positive i.e. the performance is better and increases but if the nature of the work to be done is complex then the effect of the presence of others is negative i.e. the performance decreases.