Exploring the Effects of Extraversion on Social Facilitation and Vigilance Task Performance

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 1216-1220
Author(s):  
Victoria L. Claypoole ◽  
Grace E. Waldfogle ◽  
Alexis R. Neigel ◽  
James L. Szalma
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Vigilance Task ◽  
Task Design ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Vigilance Performance ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Design Factors ◽  
And Task

Vigilance, or sustained attention, is the ability to maintain attention for extended periods of time. Recently, research on vigilance has focused on identifying individual differences and task design factors that may improve cognitive-based vigilance performance. One such factor is social facilitation, which leads to improved task performance when at least one individual is present. But, relatively little is known about the personality factors, such as extraversion or introversion, which may influence the effects of social presence, and in turn affect vigilance performance. Given this gap in the literature, the present research seeks to determine how personality, specifically extraversion, is related to vigilance performance in the presence of another individual. A total of 39 observers completed a 24-minute vigilance task either alone, in the mere presence of another person, or in the evaluative presence of another person (i.e., an individual monitoring their performance). The results indicated that extraversion was negatively correlated to the proportion of correct detections and sensitivity ( A’).

Independent Coactors May Improve Performance and Lower Workload: Viewing Vigilance Under Social Facilitation

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 822-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria L. Claypoole ◽  
James L. Szalma
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Vigilance Task ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Future Research ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Improve Performance ◽  
Motivational Interventions ◽  
Perceived Workload

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of an independent coactor on vigilance task performance. It was hypothesized that the presence of an independent coactor would improve performance in terms of the proportion of false alarms while also increasing perceived workload and stress. Background: Vigilance, or the ability to maintain attention for extended periods, is of great interest to human factors psychologists. Substantial work has focused on improving vigilance task performance, typically through motivational interventions. Of interest to vigilance researchers is the application of social facilitation as a means of enhancing vigilance. Social facilitation seeks to explain how social presence may improve performance. Method: A total of 100 participants completed a 24-min vigil either alone or in the presence of an independent (confederate) coactor. Participants completed measures of perceived workload and stress. Results: The results indicated that performance (i.e., proportion of false alarms) was improved for those who completed the vigil in the presence of an independent coactor. Interestingly, perceived workload was actually lower for those who completed the vigil in the presence of an independent coactor, although perceived stress was not affected by the manipulation. Conclusion: Authors of future research should extend these findings to other forms of social facilitation and examine vigilance task performance in social contexts in order to determine the utility of social presence for improving vigilance. Application: The use of coactors may be an avenue for organizations to consider utilizing to improve performance because of its relative cost-effectiveness and easy implementation.

Motivational Correlates of Vigilance Task Engagement

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1524-1528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis R. Neigel ◽  
Victoria L. Claypoole ◽  
Kristen M. Waldorf ◽  
Daryn A. Dever ◽  
James L. Szalma
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Stress State ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Achievement Motivation ◽  
Vigilance Task ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Task Engagement ◽  
Long Form ◽  
Engagement Factors ◽  
And Task

There is relatively little research on the intersection of state and trait motivation measures and vigilance task engagement. The present research demonstrates and catalogs the correlation between several measures of self-reported motivation and task engagement factors on the short- and long-form versions of the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (DSSQ; Matthews et al., 2002; Matthews, 2016). Data was collected from 200 participants across three vigilance studies. Evidence from correlational analyses indicated that state intrinsic motivation, trait achievement motivation, and trait self-esteem are related to perceived task engagement at both pre- and post-task. This research demonstrates that individual differences in state and trait motivation are important to consider in the measurement of vigilance task engagement and stressrelated task performance.

Detection-Action Linkage in Vigilance: Effects on Workload and Stress

2007 ◽  
Vol 51 (19) ◽  
pp. 1291-1295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelley S. Parsons ◽  
Joel S. Warm ◽  
W. Todd Nelson ◽  
Gerald Matthews ◽  
Michael A. Riley
Keyword(s):  
Signal Detection ◽  
Mental Workload ◽  
Vigilance Task ◽  
Control Task ◽  
Vigilance Performance ◽  
Induced Stress ◽  
And Task

Using a simulated UAV control task in which a vigilance display warned observers of the presence of enemy threats, Gunn et al. (2005) reported that perceived mental workload in relation to the vigilance task was unexpectedly low. The present study did not confirm that finding. It did show, however, that vigilance performance was greater and task induced stress was less among observers who had the opportunity to act upon vigilance signal detections by destroying the enemy threats than among those who detected threats but had no opportunity to counter them. Accordingly, the results point to the importance of a detection-action linkage to enhance signal detection and reduce stress in the performance of vigilance tasks.

Predicting Task-Induced State Changes in a Multitasking Environment from Personality Factors

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 762-766
Author(s):  
G. Teo ◽  
L. Reinerman-Jones ◽  
G. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Task Design ◽  
Emotional Stability ◽  
Personality Factors ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
State Changes ◽  
Selected Traits ◽  
The Brain ◽  
And Task

Very often, technologies are developed with more of an understanding about the tasks to be accomplished than of the mental processes associated with performing the task. In multitasking environments, this can be detrimental to system and task design since the brain may not distinguish and process tasks in the same way as systems do. This can result in technologies that work against the individual’s mental inclinations which can, in part, be attributed to personality factors. The present study investigated the relationships between selected traits and various task outcomes in a multitasking environment. Although several traits were associated with different task-induced states, Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness were significant predictors of several task outcomes, having the most lasting effects throughout the tasks.

The Effects of Social Facilitation on Vigilance Performance

1980 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 595-599
Author(s):  
Kenneth Linger ◽  
Melinda G. Copeland ◽  
J. Thomas Roth ◽  
Charles G. Halcomb ◽  
Richard P. McGlynn
Keyword(s):  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Improve Performance ◽  
Vigilance Performance ◽  
Mere Presence

Two experiments were conducted to determine if vigilance performance could be reliably improved by the presence of potentially evaluative or nonevaluative coactors, and to examine differential predictions regarding the necessary conditions for social facilitation. Neither the mere presence of a coactor nor the presence of evaluation potential was found to improve performance.

Social Facilitation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison E. Seitchik ◽  
Adam J. Brown ◽  
Stephen G. Harkins
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Task Analysis ◽  
Complex Tasks ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Prepotent Responses

Research conducted for more than a century has shown that the presence of others improves performance on simple tasks and debilitates it on complex tasks, whether these others are audience members or coactors. In this chapter, we review theories offered to account for how two features of these others, their mere presence and/or the potential for evaluation they represent, produce these effects, and we conclude that we are no closer now to isolating the relevant process(es) than we were 100 years ago. We then consider the molecular task analysis proposed by Harkins (2006) as an approach to attacking this problem, followed by a review of the work supporting the mere effort account suggested by this analysis. Finally, we place the mere effort account in the larger context represented by the Threat-Induced Potentiation of Prepotent Responses model, which aims to account for the effect of threat on task performance.

Social Facilitation with Non-Human Agents: Possible or not?

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hertz ◽  
Eva Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Social Facilitation ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Still Images ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Task Conditions ◽  
Performance Results ◽  
Task Types

As interactions with non-human agents increase, it is important to understand and predict the consequences of human interactions with them. Social facilitation has a longstanding history within the realm of social psychology and is characterized by the presence of other humans having a beneficial effect on performance on easy tasks and inhibiting performance on difficult tasks. While social facilitation has been shown across task types and experimental conditions with human agents, very little research has examined whether this effect can also be induced by non-human agents and, if so, to what degree the level of humanness and embodiment of those agents influences that effect. In the current experiment, we apply a common social facilitation task (i.e., numerical distance judgments) to investigate to what extent the presence of agents of varying degrees of humanness benefits task performance. Results show a significant difference in performance between easy and difficult task conditions, but show no significant improvement in task performance in the social presence conditions compared to performing the task alone. This suggests that the presence of others did not have a positive effect on performance, at least not when social presence was manipulated via still images. Implications of this finding for future studies, as well as for human-robot interaction are discussed.

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