Social Facilitation Effects of Virtual Humans

When people do an easy task, and another person is nearby, they tend to do that task better than when they are alone. Conversely, when people do a hard task, and another person is nearby, they tend to do that task less well than when they are alone. This phenomenon is referred to as "social facilitation". The present study investigated whether people show social facilitation in the presence of a virtual human. Participants were given different tasks to do that varied in difficulty. The tasks involved anagrams, mazes, and modular arithmetic. They did the tasks either alone, in the company of another person, or in the company of a virtual human on a computer screen. The virtual human produced the social facilitation effect: for easy tasks, performance in the virtual human condition was better than in the alone condition, and for difficult tasks, performance in the virtual human condition was worse than in the alone condition. These results suggest guidelines for the use of vir...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: HF
• Authors: Sung Park, Richard Catrambone
• Keywords: Easy Tasks, HF 2007, Social Facilitation, Virtual Humans