The Truth About Triplett (1898), But Nobody Seems to Care

Abstract

Since Gordon Allport (1954) identified Triplett’s (1898) study as the first social psychological experiment in his handbook chapter on the history of social psychology, most social psychology textbooks have been repeating this claim. They typically add that it was also the first study demonstrating social facilitation. According to their descriptions, Triplett (1898) had children reel in fishing lines and he found that their performance improved when this task was performed in the presence of another child rather than alone. None of this is correct. Triplett’s study was not the first social psychology study (it was not even the first study on social facilitation), the experimental task was described wrongly, and the evidence for social facilitation was overstated. Because correct information about the historical status of the Triplett study has been available for many decades, this type of misinformation raises questions about whether psychologists attach sufficient importance to the history of their discipline.