ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the presence of other people can affect a person's performance. The majority of this research was concerned with how the social environment or group influences individual people. The chapter also discusses some answers to these questions for a variety of distinct types of social motivation losses. It concludes by discussing some integrative models of social performance, which build on the theories of social facilitation. One of the most heavily researched topics within the area of social motivation losses is social loafing, which also has its roots in some of the earliest experiments within social psychology. Researchers have focused on a number of variables that seem to produce, and reduce, social loafing. Although initial studies pointed to identifiability as a cause of social loafing, some later research has suggested that it may not be identifiability per se that is the relevant variable, but rather it is the potential for evaluation that identifiability makes possible.
