Wow, the world is such a different place since I last wrote one of these. While we are in the midst of a global pandemic (yikes), maybe one of the advantages (??) to the situation is that it gives us a unique opportunity to observe some psychological phenomena up close and personally with the people sharing the spaces around us, whether they are virtual or IRL. While my observations probably wouldn’t pass IRB standards — for starters, I’m not actually using any system other than my own biased observations for this “experiment” — I think it’s still useful to apply concepts in real life situations and think about how they might work similarly or differently in our present circumstances.
I thought it would be useful to apply the idea of Social Facilitation to a situation I’ve found myself in recently: taking virtual, live streamed dance classes instead of in-person ones.
Social Facilitation is a concept in social psychology which has to do with the behavior of individuals in groups and how the presence of others can impact our performance. Basically, Social Facilitation is the idea that the presence of others can enhance our performance on a well-learned activity or task; that is, their presence facilitates our performance. I won’t get into it too much in this post, but the presence of others can actually harm our performance in certain situations, for example, when tasks are not well-learned, so it doesn’t always work this way! However, in this post, I’m going to concentrate on a well-learned task and how social facilitation may apply to dance classes in the virtual space. I would argue that for me, as a dance major and someone who has been dancing pretty much my whole life, dance for me is a well-learned activity. Under normal circumstances, when taking class in person, where the students and teacher are sharing the physical space, I do feel the effects of Social Facilitation. When others are pushing themselves, that makes me want to push myself too. In this way, the effort of individual students can collectively facilitate improvement and effort for everyone, because when we are all working hard, that facilitates greater effort and competition.
However, in a virtual class, this can be quite different. While in a class over Zoom, the teacher might be able to see us, we are in a smaller space, so there isn’t as much pressure to perform at a high level. Depending on the viewing settings you choose, you can select to not have anyone else on the screen at all. I’ve discovered that this setting really reduces the positive effects of social facilitation, because when I can only see myself, especially if the teacher isn’t speaking much, it can feel like I am doing this by myself, and it’s harder to motivate myself to make the effort to push through. However, if I choose the gallery view and can see all of my classmates taking part together, their efforts help my motivation, and I feel more committed to pay attention and do my best. While I recognize that this situation isn’t a 1:1 comparison with something like bike-racing or a swimming competition, I think Social Facilitation can still definitely play a role, and it’s interesting to consider how that becomes more or less effective when combined with the technological choice to see or not see your classmates.
socially psyched 