How Do You Compare Theories Of Social Facilitation?
There are three major approaches to social facilitation theory (sometimes called social influence or impact theory): social facilitation, social impact and normative social influence. These three are very similar, but differ on some important but subtle points that differentiate them from one another. Ultimately, they all deal with the effect of crowds or an audience on the performance of tasks. Social facilitation as a basic theory utilizes the nature of the job at hand to measure the effect of an audience upon the work. An easy job with an audience will be even easier, while a challenging job with an audience will be even harder and more stressful. This is because the audience gives a psychological push that makes easy jobs easier and hard jobs seem more daunting. In this case, we have taken out the variable of the job and made it the center of the effect of crowds. The “impact” approach stresses the type of audience the worker is facing. While all audiences will have some effect on
