Social facilitation i en modern kontext: ett digitalt perspektiv

Sammanfattning: Social facilitation is a phenomenon that describes how performance changes depending on the presence of others. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways that social presence in a digital form affects performance. It was based on previous research that has shown that a social facilitation effect can occur as a result of social presence in the form of a video chat, where performance on simple tasks improved and performance on complex tasks worsens. The aim was to investigate whether the results obtained in previous research could be replicated and if a similar effect could be caused by social presence in the form of observation via a camera. Ten Lund University students completed visual search tasks in different types of digital observation conditions. The results showed no significant social facilitation effect when reaction time was used as a measurement of performance. However, an effect was found when accuracy rate was used a performance measure. Possible explanations of these results were discussed and it is suggested, despite the fact that a social facilitation effect could not be proven in this experiment, that the results may give tentative support to the theory that digital social presence has an effect on performance. The study concludes by recommending that further investigation of social facilitation in a digital context should be conducted in order to improve the understanding of how different types of digital social presence affect task performance.