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Have you noticed that in certain situations, you work way better when around others than when you are alone? For example, if your boss is in the room you may tend to go the extra mile. Or when you work in a cafe or library, it is easier to focus and get things done. This phenomenon is known as social facilitation. Social facilitation theory describes the improvement in an individual’s task performance when others are present.
Explanations for How Social Facilitation Theory Works
There are numerous studies on this topic, especially in the field of social psychology. In general findings support the following: when conducting well-rehearsed tasks, the presence of others has an energizing, enhancing effect that leads to better performance. However, when the task is difficult or unfamiliar, the presence of others can impair performance (social inhibition). These findings are quite interesting, but why does this phenomenon occur? The following are possible explanations for the underlying mechanisms behind social facilitation theory.
Affective Factors
You want to make a good impression and maintain a positive self-image. In other words, you perform better, because you are anxious about others evaluating you.
Co-action Effects in Social Facilitation Theory
The presence of others doing the same task can enhance your performance. For example, athletes tend to perform better when competing against each other than when individually trying to beat a time.
Physiological Factors
Being around others causes you to be more alert and activated. The increase in stress elicits your most dominant or habitual response. When the tasks are simple or well rehearsed, your dominant response is probably correct. Therefore, you experience a performance boost.
Cognitive Factors (Distraction Conflict and Attention)
The presence of others results in a situation in which you must decide whether to direct your attention to the task or person. When the task is simple, you tend to screen out nonessential cues and focus more on the task, resulting in performance enhancement.
Social Orientation in Social Facilitation Theory
If you tend to enjoy social situations you will feel energized by them and perform better.
Audience Effects
Your performance improves, because you are doing something in front of an audience.
How close or supportive the audience is may also affect to what degree social facilitation or inhibition occurs.
Feedback Loop in Social Facilitation Theory
The presence of others causes you to become more self-aware and thereby more conscious of discrepancies between your present behavior and a standard of comparison. For example, you may work more diligently when others are watching, because you are more conscious of making potential mistakes.
Social Inhibition – The Flipside of Social Facilitation Theory
Cognitive Factors (Distraction Conflict and Attention)
Performance pressure takes up working memory capacity and causes cognitive overload, leading to a restriction in attention focus.
This means that when the task is complex, the presence of others causes you to miss out on essential cues that would be necessary to complete it successfully. Let’s say you are trying to learn a new program but the colleague across from you regularly talks on the phone. This could be very distracting and make it even more difficult for you to learn.
Audience Effects
A hostile or unfriendly audience can inhibit your performance.
Social Orientation
Those who don’t enjoy social situations will feel impaired in their performance when others are around.
Watch out for Social Loafing
Social loafing is the opposite of social facilitation. This phenomenon occurs when we don’t work as hard while in the presence of others as when alone; it’s particularly salient when we our performance is not monitored.
Practical Tips to Make Social Facilitation Theory Work for You
1. If you need to get something done but can’t focus, try changing up your environment. Go to a place like a café or library to get a little performance boost. Or instead of working from home every day, spend a day or two per week in the office.
2. Working alone at home is not always productive. While there are numerous benefits, it’s not always easy to concentrate. One possible solution is to connect with others online and have some virtual coworking. In this way you can keep each other accountable and increase the fun-factor of remote work.
3. If the task you are working on is quite complex and you feel it would be more effective to work in a quiet place, try to arrange your environment accordingly. Work for a few hours in an unoccupied conference room or use a do not disturb sign to box off some time for concentrated, uninterrupted work.
4. If you need to give a presentation or a pitch, practice alone before presenting to others. Put in the time needed to get so familiar with the material that you could recite it in your sleep. When the time comes to present, you are more likely to benefit from the audience effect.
5. If you feel confident about your ability to present something, you are more likely to perform well in front of others. Therefore, make sure you have the right mindset. Don’t let the fear of being evaluated by others get the best of you. Dispute any self-limiting thoughts and prove to yourself, even using past successes, that you can execute well. You have practiced and put in the effort, so believe that you will succeed. Think about stress as something positive that drives you and prepares you / activates you to have peak performance. It’s not something that will inhibit you.
Surround Yourself with the Right People to Increase Productivity
In this article, I consider the effects that people can have on others’ performance, especially in the work context. Although the following study did not investigate social facilitation directly, it showed how individual performance can be improved or inhibited based on who you sit next to at work.
A Harvard Business Review article published in 2017 reported findings from a study that followed 2,000 employees of a large technology company for two years. The goal was to see how seating arrangements affected employee productivity, effectiveness, and work quality.
The study found that neighbors have a significant impact on an employee’s performance. Approximately 10% of a worker’s performance spills over to their neighbors. If an average performer sat next to someone who was twice as productive, their own productivity increased by about 10%.
Another interesting finding is the positive results of pairing employees with opposite strengths. When productive workers and quality workers sat together, there was a 13% gain in productivity (speed) and 17% gain in effectiveness (more resolved tasks).
Also, workers who were strong in a particular dimension were less effected by spillover for that dimension. For example, a fast worker placed next to a slow worker more likely caused the slow worker to speed up. By contrast, the speed of the fast worker remained unaffected.
In addition, the study showed that toxic workers could negatively affect any type of worker. If toxic employees sat next to eachother, the chance of one being fired increased by a whopping 27%.
Practical Tips to Take Advantage of Spillover from Work Colleagues
1. Aim to work around people who will have a positive effect on you. For example, if you want to be more productive, work next to someone who is much more productive than you are. And don’t feel intimidated by them, rather be willing to learn and improve. See personal growth as a process that you foster when around others who are more skilled than you.
2. Try to spend time working with colleagues who have different strengths than you. This will help you to grow in other areas. Let’s say you work quickly, but are not always accurate. Working with someone who is slower, but delivers better quality work, will help you to improve the quality of your work.
3. Avoid toxic individuals, as they will affect you negatively. Such people will waste your time and cause you to be less productive.
Summary
In this post we covered the concept of social facilitation and how to take advantage of it to enhance performance. The main thrust of this psychological phenomenon is that sometimes working in the presence of others / with others will enhance performance and other times may hinder it. If you are aware of the factors that influence these outcomes, you can make social facilitation work for you.
We also reviewed a study published in the Harvard Business Review that showed how seating arrangements at work can impact employee productivity.
Key Takeaways from Social Facilitation Theory and Employee Spillover Effects:
1. When conducting well-rehearsed tasks, the presence of others has an energizing, enhancing effect that can lead to better performance. However, when the task is difficult or unfamiliar, the presence of others can impair performance.
2. Pay attention to your environment. At times just being with other people will help you to work better. If the task requires particularly strong concentration withdraw to a quiet place / box off times for concentrated work in which colleagues know not to disturb you.
3. If you need to give a presentation practice diligently in advance and work on your mindset so that you are confident about your ability to succeed. By doing so, you can benefit from social facilitation effects and perform even better than expected.
4. You can enhance your performance by working around people who are more productive or have different strengths than you.
5. Avoid toxic people as they will most likely have a negative impact on your performance.
References
https://hbr.org/2017/02/want-to-be-more-productive-sit-next-to-someone-who-is
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