Social effects (can enhance or degrade or translate) including social facilitation
When the behavior of an individual animal changes from when the animal is alone to when the animal is with one or more members of the same species, the dynamic is called a social effect. Social facilitation may occur whether the individual has an overt interaction (co-actors) with another or merely if one or more others are present (audience).
Much of social facilitation theory focuses on arousal (from support, or attention, or even from conflict) that increases performance effort. Social effects can introduce substantive changes in behavior; viewing those changes only through the filter of an arbitrary performance criterion may exclude a more robust perspective.
It’s worth noting that pheromone / semiochemical molecules alone can establish the presence of another member of the species in the question of social facilitation.
Some non-sexual social effects include:
- conflict (e.g., territorial contests)
- performance decomposition (e.g. specialization / taking a role)
- performance energy (e.g. runner in empty stadium/filled stadium)
- performance quality (e.g. musician playing with band or orchestra)
- performance focus (e.g. collaborative attention)
- performance flow (e.g. intuitive adaptiveness)
- distraction (e.g. finger maze duration)
- tension or disfluency (e.g. increased stuttering)
- comfort / relaxation (e.g. entertaining)
- dominance / submission (e.g. leading, deferring, direction, obedience)
- dissimulation (e.g. camouflage or disguising of self or actions)
- disclosure (e.g. divulging secrets, gossiping)
- playfulness (e.g. celebration, group identification, bonding)
I’m thinking that for every social effect that contributes to genetic success, there is probably one or more human pheromones that initiate (self), evoke (others, involuntary), request (others, negotiated), support (maintain), hide (stealth), amplify or dampen/end that particular social effect.
I’m wondering if we can work ~backward~ from the social effects to a logical structure of pheromones – and then see where the gaps in our knowledge might be.