Norman Triplett Social Facilitation

Behavior Analysis

There are behaviors from a psychological perspective that people believe are common in people regardless of there background, race, age, and gender. These behaviors can vary from evolutionary, biological, behaviorism, psychodynamic, cognitive, social and developmental psychological perspectives. I have chosen Social facilitation as a behavior that I think is common in people. Social and cognitive psychological perspectives is a way to explain why the behavior common in people. Social psychologists examine the factors that lead us to behave in a given way in the presence of others, as well as the conditions under which certain behaviors, actions, and feelings occur. A cognitive psychologist examines internal mental processes

People’s behavior increases when there is a presence of other people rather than alone. This usually happens with well- learned or simple tasks, but not with tasks that are difficult and people who are not experienced with a task. There are numerous of examples to show the behavior is universal. I think that sports are a great example of social facilitation. An athlete will perform better in front of a crowd and will perform better when being watched in front of thousands of people. If you are running in the park alone, you may run slow at your own pace. As soon as other runners enter the park, you will notice yourself running faster. Social facilitation triggers our competitiveness. There was an experiment done by Norman Triplett in 1897. Norman Triplett observed professional bicyclist. His first observation was when cyclist raced individually against the time. During the second observation, cyclist raced together without completion, and the third observation showed winners have faster times in the competitive race. Norman Triplett showed that bicyclist pedaled faster when they ride with other people. Another example is a group of employees giving a presentation about their proposal.

Social facilitation is a social psychological perspective that is common in humans. People all around us tend to have a major influence on us. When people are in groups, the groups affects our individual behavior. People often feel as if they should fit in a group they are apart of. As stated in one of my examples, the Norman Triplett experiment is apart of social psychology. Norman Triplett also did another study to see the competitive nature of children. He gave each child string and had them reel it. When the children were competing, they were more productive. This experiment made Norman Triplett think about removing the competition and overall replacing it with some form of a person. His experiments demonstrate the co-action effect. The co-action effect is an increase in performance. Since I explained the social psychological perspective is universal, next I’m going to explain the second