Evidence Of Social Facilitation Research Articles

Tolerance and Social Facilitation in the Foraging Behaviour of Free-Ranging Crows (Corvus corone corone; C. c. cornix).

Social foraging provides animals with opportunities to gain knowledge about available food. Studies indicate that animals are influenced by social context during exploration and are able to learn socially. Carrion and hooded crows, which are opportunistic generalists with flexible social systems, have so far received little focus in this area. We combined observational and experimental approaches to investigate social interactions during foraging and social influences on crow behaviour within a free-ranging population at Vienna Zoo, which included 115 individually marked crows. We expected the crows to be tolerant of conspecifics during foraging due to high food abundance. We predicted that social context would enhance familiar object exploration, as well as a specific foraging strategy: predation by crows on other species. We found that crows were highly tolerant of one another, as reflected by their high rates of cofeeding - where they fed directly beside conspecific(s) - relative to affiliative or agonistic interactions. Evidence for social facilitation - when the observer's behaviour is affected by the mere presence of a model - was found in both object exploration and predation behaviour. Specifically, crows touched the objects more frequently when others were present (whilst only approaching the objects when alone), and conspecifics were present more frequently during predation events involving the high-risk target species. Evidence for enhancement during object exploration - where the observer's attention is drawn to a place or object by a model's actions - was not confirmed in this context. Our results highlight the role played by the presence of conspecifics across different contexts: natural foraging behaviour, familiar object exploration and a specific foraging strategy. To our knowledge, this is one of the first corvid studies aimed at teasing apart specific social influence and learning mechanisms in the field. These crows therefore make promising candidates for studying social learning and its consequences under naturalistic conditions.

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

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.

Some cognitive and neuropsychological aspects of social inhibition and facilitation

Tasks that, in the working memory and neuropsychological literature, have been related to executive and frontal processing, and nonexecutive and more posterior brain processing, bear distinct similarities with the kinds of tasks that, in the social psychological literature, have been associated with social inhibition and facilitation, respectively. Accordingly, a cognitive-neuropsychological model of social inhibition and facilitation is proposed whereby the presence of others engages the executive and frontal systems, and facilitates the function of systems active in more automatic, nonexecutive processing. In two experiments, the tasks most associated with executive and frontal processing (phonemic switches and answers to complex questions) showed evidence of social inhibition, whereas those more associated with nonexecutive and more posterior temporal processing (phonemic clusters and confidence–accuracy correlations), showed some evidence of social facilitation. Implications are discussed.

Collaborative Problem Solving in Five‐Year‐Old Children: Evidence of social facilitation and social loafing

Children’s problem solving while working by themselves or with a partner was investigated to explore whether young children are susceptible to social facilitation and social loafing. Five‐year‐olds were asked to complete easy or hard puzzles, either alone or with a partner. Half of the children were given instructions indicating that their performance would be evaluated and the other half were not. Children showed social facilitation, in that they performed better with a partner than when working alone under evaluation conditions, with the easy puzzle. Children also showed social loafing, in that performance with a partner was poorer when working under no evaluation than evaluation conditions, with the easy puzzle. Performance with the hard puzzle did not differ whether children worked alone or with a partner, but children working on the hard puzzle under no evaluation conditions performed better than those working under evaluation conditions. The findings suggest that evaluation affects children’s performance in group settings in different ways depending on task difficulty.

Absence of social facilitation of courtship in the wolf spider, Schizocosa ocreata (Hentz) (Araneae: Lycosidae)

Males of many animal species are reproductively limited by the difficulty and time costs of finding mates. Males of such species should be selected to take advantage of any cues that might reveal the location of prospective mates. Cues to female location are not restricted to those produced by females, but might also include the highly apparent courtship displays of males that have already found a female. By “eavesdropping” on these courting rivals, initiating sexual displays when courting rivals are detected (i.e., social facilitation of displays); males might effectively exploit the mate-searching efforts of their rivals. We tested the possibility that male Schizocosa ocreata wolf spiders exhibit social facilitation of courtship behaviors using a combination of live behavioral trials and video playback with single stimulus presentations. When exposed to visual cues from another male, male S. ocreata can discern the presence of another individual whether that individual is courting or not. However, we found no evidence of social facilitation of courtship or chemoexploratory behaviors in response to seismic or visual cues presented in isolation or combined. While complex, multimodal, male courtship signals are important in mate choice by female S. ocreata, males do not appear to use these cues to socially facilitate their own courtship.

Social interactions in kittiwake colonies: social facilitation and/or favourable social environment

A video study of social facilitation was carried out on a kittiwake, Rissa tridactyla, colony. For the analysis, the video sequences were divided into adjacent periods of 15 s. The temporal limits of each behaviour could thus be defined and its length taken into account. There were significant differences between the behaviour of neighbouring birds during the mating of a pair and that shown at other times. A comparison of the frequencies of behaviours shown by neighbouring birds during the two alternating stages of mating (Mounting and Copulation) permitted two kinds of behaviours, which differed during mating, to be distinguished. (1) The behaviours that differed between Copulation and Mounting reveal the reaction of the neighbouring birds to Copulation (but no evidence of social facilitation could be found). (2) The behaviours that differed only between Mating sequences (case sequences) and other sequences (control sequences) had probably started before the mating started. Consequently, the temporal clustering of activities in colonies may be due to the effect of particular behaviours which could favour the appearance of certain other behaviour. This mechanism (Favourable Social Environment) can act simultaneously with social facilitation. It raises the possibility that social environment may influence greatly the production of young in colonial birds.