One of the biggest controversies surrounding social moderation is its emergence. Psychologists continue to debate whether social relief is supported by the innate biology of humans and animals or by social learning, either through interaction with society or through individual interaction with other people, rather than by society at large. Further research and the expansion of experiments and theories may begin to solve or further complicate these problems. [36] One of the first documented studies in social psychology appeared in Norman Triplett`s 1898 article “The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition,” which described observational data from competitive cyclists and an experimental study of how quickly children could spin a fishing reel. Triplett showed that competitive cyclists paired with other cyclists achieved faster race times than cyclists who rode against the clock. In the experimental section of the article, children were asked to spin a fishing reel as quickly as possible to move a character along a racetrack, either with other children (koaktion) or alone. Children in the co-action were more likely to rotate the role faster than those who performed the task on their own. These results led to the conclusion that the presence of other people, especially the cooperation of other people, improved performance. Social moderation is thought to involve three factors: In terms of the basic definition of social relief, social relief refers to an improvement in performance induced by the real, implicit, or imaginary presence of others. Zajonc RB, SM Sales. Social moderation of dominant and subordinate reactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
1966;2(2):160-168. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(66)90077-1 Baron, R. S. (1986). Distraction-Conflict Theory: Progress and Problems. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 19, pp. 1-40). Academic press.
The concept of social moderation has a long history and involves a variety of interconnected ideas. The most important idea should be that sometimes collaborating with others (or performing in front of an audience) will improve your performance, and sometimes it can get in the way. If you can learn the factors that influence these results, you can make social relief work for you in all situations. This was not the first time that research has yielded conflicting results related to social assistance. To deal with these contradictory results, Zajonc and Sales suggested in 1966 that the “dominant response” was the explanatory factor. A final related explanation for the effects of social moderation is one that focuses on affective responses associated with assessment in the presence of others. This statement highlights the importance of self-presentation concerns related to performance before others. Some psychologists have argued that the most important consequence of an audience (or co-actors) is that their presence shapes the performer`s behavior and emphasizes the importance of making a good impression or avoiding a bad impression. To the extent that individuals feel that they can present themselves positively while being monitored, which they would prefer to believe if the tasks were simple or well learned, then presenting others would facilitate performance. If, on the other hand, the task is difficult or new, the individual can expect to perform poorly.
Ironically, this fear or fear of judgment associated with good performance can worsen their performance. Convincing evidence for this idea comes from studies that found no difference in task performance when participants performed a task alone or in the presence of a blindfolded audience. These results suggest that the ability of other people present to assess performance is crucial for social moderation/inhibition effects. Zajonc`s provocative theory and empirical data renewed interest in social moderation research, and a flood of empirical research followed. To understand the many studies, researchers in the 1980s looked at all the studies simultaneously (a process called meta-analysis) to extract generalizable constructs and measure the reliability of the phenomenon. After reviewing 241 studies involving more than 24,000 subjects, the authors concluded that the presence of other people actually inhibited the accuracy of complex performance and reduced response speed. Still in line with the theory, the meta-analysis showed that the presence of others allowed for simple performance speed, but there was less evidence that performance accuracy increased in the presence of others. This finding could be caused by dumping effects; Performance is already so close to perfection for simple tasks that the additive benefit that comes from the presence of other people can be difficult to detect. Whether or not social moderation takes place depends on the nature of the task: people tend to experience social relief when they are familiar with a task or for well-learned skills. A complementary theory in social psychology is the theory of the social sloth: the idea that people can devote less effort to tasks while being part of teams. As psychologists Steven Karau and Kipling Williams explain, social idleness and social relief occur in different circumstances.
Social facilitation explains how we act when the other people present are observers or competitors: in this case, the presence of other people can improve our performance on a task (as long as the task is the one we have already mastered). However, if the other people present are our teammates, the social sloth suggests that we can put in less effort (perhaps because we feel less responsible for the work of the group) and that our performance on a task can be reduced. To give an example of how social moderation might work in real life, think about how the presence of an audience might affect a musician`s performance. A talented musician who has won many awards can feel stimulated by the presence of an audience and have a live performance that is even better than at home. However, someone learning a new instrument may be anxious or distracted by the pressure of playing among an audience and make mistakes they wouldn`t have made if they had practiced alone. In other words, social moderation depends on a person`s familiarity with the task: the presence of other people tends to improve performance on tasks that people already know well, but tends to decrease performance on unknown tasks. In a 2002 meta-analysis, three conclusions were drawn. First of all, it was found that the presence of other people only increased the excitement of accomplishing a complex task. Second, the presence of other people increased the speed of performance for a simple task, but decreased it for a complex task.
Finally, it has been shown that the effects of social moderation are not related to fear of evaluation. The researchers used electronic performance monitoring (EPM) to study the effects of social relief. So far, this trend has been limited to face-to-face or group environments, but electronic performance monitoring determines the impact of social moderation in the virtual sense. EPM is the use of information technology (e.g., computer networks) to track, evaluate, analyze and report on an employee`s performance. Many companies have adopted this method, in which employee activity is automatically monitored throughout the working day. This topic is of considerable interest to those working in the field of social psychology because of the mechanism underlying the work; namely, the phenomenon of social relief. Why is this happening? According to Zajonc, the presence of other people makes people more likely to engage in what psychologists call the dominant response (essentially our “standard response”: the type of action that is most natural to us in this situation). For simple tasks, the dominant response is likely to be effective, so social relief will occur.
However, for complex or unknown tasks, the dominant response is less likely to lead to a correct response, so the presence of other people inhibits our performance in the task. Essentially, if you do something you`re already good at, social moderation will happen and the presence of other people will make you even better. However, for new or difficult tasks, you`re less likely to do well when others are around. Norman Triplett`s early research describes social facilitation in cases of co-action, where a task is performed in the presence of other people performing a similar task without necessarily interacting directly with each other. [2] Triplett first observed this in cyclists and found that cyclists rode at higher speeds when competing against other cyclists than when cycling alone. [3] Social moderation is also known to occur when a task is performed in front of an audience, or during observation periods sometimes referred to as hearing effects.