How to 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.
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Comparing Theories of Social Facilitation
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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.
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The "impact" approach stresses the type of audience the worker is facing. While all audiences will have some effect on the labor at hand, the type of audience is the most important thing. It includes audiences of strangers, friends and family. The latter two will force large and substantial psychological pushes that create tremendous stresses that get more debilitating as the job at hand gets harder and less familiar.
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The "normative" approach isolates not the job, nor the nature of the crowd, but the social norm at hand. In this case, it is the "idea" that "everyone" seems to hold that has the motive force and, hence, the psychological impact. In this case, if everyone agrees on a moral norm, and there is one person that does not, the one person is not likely to object. The nature of the psychological force is the power of the crowd to enforce rules and apply social punishments.
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Given these three approaches, the way to begin to compare must be the isolation of the specific variable. Ask yourself what the "motive force" is for any amount of stress that a job will have. Is it the job itself, the nature of the audience or the norm being enforced? The distinction can be very subtle, and there is always room for much overlap, but this is the basic method.
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Finally, there is the question that the researcher is trying to answer. If you are doing a paper on social facilitation, keep in mind that the research question on which you are working can affect the nature of the analysis. Labor studies might stress the job, social philosophy might stress the norm, while sociological studies might stress the nature of the audience. The nature of the question may well dictate the way one compares the approaches.
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Tips & Warnings
It is often the case that the variables will overlap substantially. Keep in mind that what you are looking for are elements that stress one force over another, one variable over another.
An important warning for all social scientists is not to obsess about the quantitative nature of the variable without also stressing the qualitative nature of the relations. This is a common problem among students to stress the formal over the informal in the name of scientific rigor. This is an error to be avoided as it can skew your research results.
