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Alright, let's talk about how the presence of others
can actually affect your individual behavior.
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We all know that when you're by yourself
you act a certain way;
but when you're with others,
you change the way you act.
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Why is that' And what are some
of the factors that drive that?
So the phenomena of changing the way you act,
in a way that actually helps you,
something called Social Facilitation.
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This is the tendency of your pupil to perform differently
in the presence of others versus being alone.
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I have here as an example a basketball
or any type of a sporting event,
where an individual rises to the occasion because
they're in an arena where everybody's chanting their name.
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In something as simple as to put on perspective for you
is perhaps say just performing or giving
a speech or writing in an exam even.
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Being in a room filled with others, just the mere presence
of them being there will actually change how you perform.
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So, the mere presence of people are
simply present, just there around you,
doing similar activities or minding their own business
would change the way you act and what you do.
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Think of the example of going to a grocery store.
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There's people on the isles, people around you,
they're not even interacting with you,
but just having them there
would change the way you act.
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Now, we know that if you have others around you,
you tend to perform better on simple, well-rehearsed tasks.
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So, if you're doing something very, very simple,
let's go back to our sporting analogy,
an individual who sits there hour after hour
shooting free throws, for basketball,
or in tennis, it's practicing their serve over and over.
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The reason they do that over and over is to make
that a well-rehearsed, regulated, simple task.
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So, for you and me shooting a free throw
might be a little more difficult
or to serve a ball in tennis might be a
little more difficult coz we don't play 8 hours a day
and if we think about it,
it's really really a difficult task
but what you want to happen is that
you practice so much that it becomes automatic.
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Now, once you've done that, if you're
in a situation where you're around others,
that will be defined as a well-rehearsed or simple task
and you're going to do better
because of all the individuals around you.
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If you are having to think about a task
and it's a more complicated task,
having these other people around
you will not actually benefit you.
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Now, like what I just mentioned right here,
so social facilitation is diminished if you are
doing a more complicated or a brand new task.
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So think for example in this image here we have
an air traffic controller. That's pretty complex.
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So having others around you in a room
isn't necessarily going to benefit you,
it's not going to facilitate,
your behavior or help you perform.
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Now we also know that when you're around other people,
one other way is that you're seeing this benefit
is this increased level of arousal.
And what that's doing is actually allowing you to,
activate and find through your dominant responses.
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So these again are things that are much more automatic.
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So other factors like fear, distraction,
or over evaluation can impact your performance.
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So if you're up there speaking and the whole time
you could think while you're talking
or you're thinking about it before
you go up or you're really afraid,
things that were normally automatic for you that
you're quite, quite, good at doing
might get impacted because of others around you
so that's opposite of facilitation.