SOCIAL FACILITATION

Have you ever noticed the following?


-You finish faster mindless task like washing clothes, dishes etc when somebody is near by you.

- You perform well tasks, in which you have gained expertise when some one is near by you.

- You find difficulties in accomplishing a work or a job like writing an essay or poem or any other complicated work in presence of another person.

If you have experienced the above in your life than you must have thought that why it happens? & does it happen with every one. So let me answer today your queries. It happens with all of us & it occurs due to a psychological phenomenon known as SOCIAL FACILITATION. SOCIAL FACILITATION is defined as A TENDENCY TO DO BETTER ON EASY TASKS & WORSE ON DIFFICULT TASKS WHEN ANOTHER PERSON IS NEAR BY. Studies have shown that presence of another person have an important influence on performance.

It is very important for each one of us to understand SOCIAL FACILITATION because it affects our judgment about other individual’s abilities. To elicit on this I am sharing with you my own life experience that how because of presence of another person my performance was affected & because of this the other person judged me wrong.

Few years back I joined a Hair styling & Dressing course. Unfortunately I joined late so I missed 3 months course. As a consequence I was weak in comparison to other students. Also the teacher Mrs. Aasha Raza did not give me any special attention .Therefore I was not as good as other fellow students in making hair styles. One day Mrs. Aasha asked all the students to make hair styles on each other’s heads. I was asked to make French Plat. As I was doing my work quietly, the teacher came & stood by me. As a consequence I was nervous & was unable to make the hair style as good as others. Mrs. Aasha scolded me & said that my finger movements are not proper & she strongly thinks that I even do not know how to knead a dough. So I should join her cooking classes too .Mrs. Raza was absolutely wrong in saying that I do not know how to knead a dough because I am good in making dough & preparing different types of Parathas , Puris etc.

The above incident happened because Mrs. Raza did not realize that her presence made me nervous & as a result I was not able to make the hair style properly & so she judged me wrongly. Thus you should understand that your presence can make another person perform well if he is doing a task in which one does not require much skill or the person is engaged in a task in which he or she has been trained perfectly. On the other hand your presence can make the other person do worst if he or she is doing a complicated work or work in which is not trained well.