Gender Discrepancies in Social Facilitation

Social facilitation, the performance hindering or enhancing phenomenon that occurs when an individual completes a task under evaluation of an audience, is one of social psycholog y’s oldest and most fascinating phenomena (Aronson 2010). Sixty-two students at California State University, Sacramento completed a Color Categorization task alone or in the presence of an audience in order to examine whether participant gender influences social facilitation. Women participants, but not men, performed the task more slowly in the presence of an audience than when alone. Findings are discussed in relation to the influence of gender on social facilitation. The implications of this research can be manifested in fields of sport psycholog y, employment, and social contexts of public evaluation. The purpose of this study is to examine whether gender affects social facilitation when completing a Color Categorization Task (CCT). Social facilitation, also identified as the audience effect, is a performance effect that enhances or deteriorates an individual’s execution of a task in the presence of an evaluative audience (Aronson, Wilson, and Akert 2010, 262). This article discusses the history of social facilitation and theoretical explanations for its effects, followed by the discussion of how divergent gender self-construals lead to different behaviors, cognitions, and motivations. A combination of these two bodies of literature provides the foundation for the current study. Social Facilitation: A Brief Overview From the apprehension that public speakers experience causing them to forget their lines, to the performance enhancing effect that makes star athletes great, the implications of social facilitation are widespread. It is one of the most intriguing universal behaviors consistently found in different species. Psychologist Norman Triplett first investigated social facilitation in 1898 when he observed children reeling in fishing lines. He found that children reeled in fishing lines faster in the presence of others than when alone (Triplett 1898). Although, Triplett’s research did not examine the performance deteriorating effect, as his results only illustrated the performance enhancing effect, he did inspire several other social psychologists to study this phenomenon extensively in humans. Furthermore, research suggests that even ants, cockroaches, and birds are susceptible to its effects (Aronson, Wilson, and Akert 2010; Guerin 2003; Platania and Moran 2001). Nearly a century after Triplett’s research, Zajonc (1965) revitalized interest in social facilitation and extended the bounds of this phenomenon by using Drive Theory as a means to explain the performance deteriorating effects of unfamiliar or unpractised responses in the presence of others. Also known as DistractionConflict Theory, this theory suggests that social facilitation occurs because of a reflexive and automatic drive that arises within ambiguous situations. When an individual is placed in an ambiguous situation, an automatic response is aroused and facilitated. Using the Hull-Spence equation (sEr =sHrx D), Zajonc (1965) established that performance effects are the result of an enhancement of dominant responses. Dominant responses occur automatically because the attendance of an audience increases physiological arousal. The sympathetic nervous system activates the “fight-or-flight” stress response, and the individual’s behavior is modified by the mental heuristics that facilitate the emission of dominant responses. The result is either an obstruction or amplification of individual performance. According to Zajonc (1965), an audience stimulates the division of the performer’s cognitive performance, inasmuch as the individual is attending to the audience, as well as the task at hand. Simple tasks facilitate an enhanced performance, while complex tasks lead to reduced performance, because complex tasks require more cognitive energy than simple ones (Aronson, Wilson, and Akert 2010; Feinberg and Aiello 2006; Muller and Butera 2007; Zajonc 1965). Complex tasks are unpracticed, unfamiliar, and therefore elicit a recessive response. During a complex task, a performer is practicing a recessive response, and the requirements of the task lead to impaired functioning. During a simple task, a performer can effectively split attention between two stimuli (peripheral and central tasks). This is because the central task is practiced and mechanical, therefore eliciting a dominant response and a facilitated performance. Zajonc’s (1965) work greatly expanded our understanding of social facilitation by identifying the role of physiological arousal on performance effects; however, he did not fully explain which contextual conditions lead to the strongest social facilitation effects. Nor did he give any attention to the role of individual differences on performance (Kushnir 1978). Cottrell and colleagues (1967) proposed an alternate explanation as to what causes social facilitation with their Evaluation-Apprehension Theory, attributing the arousal responsible effects not to the physiological emissions connected to the mere-presence of the audience, but to the social context. This theory suggests that in a context of an audience, individuals associate the audience with sources of evaluation, and there is a resulting fear of potential negative evaluation. This splits cognition between the central task and the fear of apprehension via peripheral