Social Influence and Social Cognition
Definition: Social Influence
In some early experiments done in social psychology, “people performed tasks better when one or more observers were present than they did when alone” (Gray, 1999, p.533). This enhancing effect of an audience was named social facilitation. However, other experiments demonstrated an opposite effect known as social interference. Social interference is “a decline in performance when observers are present” (Gray, 1999, p.533).
Descrintion of Experience
At the age of 5, 1 started learning the piano and since then, music has been an integral part of my life. My first courses in music were group lessons at the Yamaha School of Music.
After several years of group lessons where I learned the fundamentals of music, I began private lessons from a well-respected teacher, Su-Shing Chiu. Mrs. Chiu introduced me to the classical piano and taught me my first set of repertoire. When she felt that I was ready to go out and experience the “real world of music,” she signed me up for my first piano competition. For the next 10 years, I competed in over 100 competitions—some of them local, others statewide and even some international. I fared well in many of these competitions, coming out as the
1d,
2~ or 3~ prizewinner. Quite the opposite was true at other competitions. Many times, I ended up with no award at all.
Through the process of preparing and performing at various competitions, I had played under many different conditions and for a wide range of audiences. The preparation stage consisted of many gruesome hours of practicing by myself at home and working with my piano teacher at my lessons. The actual performance can vary from having an audience of three judges to that of over 300 people packed into a concert hail. I can remember two specific competitions in front of a large audience, which yielded extremely different outcomes—one where I performed my worst, and the other where I demonstrated my best performance ever.
During August of 1995, I competed in the Bach Complete Works Competition. I had started learning Bach’s Fantasie Impromptu in C minor that May in preparation for the competition and barely memorized the music by June. Throughout July, I went to Europe on vacation and did not have the opportunity to practice the piano. When I came back a week before the competition, I practiced four to five hours a day in an attempt to get the piece down. I was able to play the piece through by the night before the competition, but I did not feel very comfortable with the song. Over 100 people were present in the audience at the competition. I ended up stopping in the middle of the song because I had a memory slip and was unable to continue for the rest of the piece. I came out of the competition with nothing but a feeling of shame. It was one of my worst performances ever.
A contrasting situation was the Southwestern Youth Music Festival’s Showcase Audition of 1998. This audition is one of the most respected competitions among the music community. I had begun preparing my repertoire for the event in 1997. I had played each of these pieces—
Chopin’s Scherzo in b flat minor, Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonate and Prokofieff’s Sonate No.

7—in at least three previous performances. By the month of the Showcase Audition, I felt so comfortable with the songs that I could play them and read a magazine at the same time. The competition had an audience turnout of over 150 people. Unlike the effects of a large audience in the 1995 event, the huge number of people caused me to perform not only the best I had ever performed the three pieces, but perhaps the best performance in my Life. I received the i
4 place award and was selected to perform in the Showcase Recital.
Analysis of Experience
On the superficial level, the outcomes of the 1995 and 1998 events seem to contradict each other. In both cases, a large audience was present during the competition. In one case, I performed well, while in the other, I performed poorly. However, social facilitation and social inteiference can explain the seemingly contradictory occurrences.
Robert Zajonc proposed a generalization involving social facilitation and social interference: “the presence of others facilitates performance of dominant (habitual, simple, or instinctive) actions and interferes with performance of nondominant (nonhabitual, complex, or unnatural) actions” (Gray, 1999, p.534). According to Zajonc, the two effects are linked to a more general phenomenon—the effect of high arousal or drive on performance. High arousal usually improves performance of simple or well-learned tasks while worsening performance of complex or poorly learned tasks. Since the presence of people causes higher arousal, the size of the audience will affect performance of tasks for better or for worse.
My poor performance in the Bach Complete Works Competition can be explained using
Zájonc’s theory. Since I had not spent adequate time in preparation for the competition, the task of playing the Fantasie Impromptu was poorly learned. The last minute cramming was insufficient to change the task to a well-learned one. During the competition, the presence of a large audience caused me to be highly aroused, and the arousal subsequently affected my performance of the piece. Since the task of performing the song was poorly learned and unnatural, the arousal interfered with the activity and caused me to play the piece worse than usual (see diagram below). As a result, I was unable to finish playing the whole song due to a memory slip and ended up shaming myself in front of 100 people.
My excellent performance at the Showcase Audition can also be explained with the same theory. Since I had prepared well in advance for this competition, playing the three pieces for this competition can be considered a well-learned task. After all, I was able to read a magazine while playing the pieces which was evident that the task had become habitual. The large audience once again caused me to be highly aroused. This time, however, the high arousal caused improved performance because the task of playing the pieces had been well-learned (see diagram below). Consequently, I performed better than ever and won
1 st prize.
Definition: Social Influence
In the 1950s, Leon Festinger proposed one of social psychology’s most central ideas— the cognitive dissonance theory .
According to the theory, “we have, built into the workings of our mind, a mechanism that creates an uncomfortable feeling of dissonance, lack of harmony,

when we become aware of some inconsistency among the various attitudes, beliefs, and items of knowledge that constitute our mental store” (Gray, 1999, p.510). The discomfort of cognitive dissonance causes us to seek ways to resolve the contradictions among our cognitions. However, our dissonance-reducing mechanism does not always work adaptively, and many times, it can lead us to reduce the dissonance in illogical or maladaptive ways.
Descrintion of Experience
A few months ago, I received a letter from the Alpha Lambda Delta Honors Society.
There was a note congratulating me for my excellent academic performance during the first semester in college and an application with instructions to write a personal statement and to include forty-five dollars. It also indicated that one applicant would be chosen to receive the
Alpha Lambda Delta scholarship of two hundred dollars.
At first, I thought the whole application was as a fluke and a waste of forty-five dollars. I had never heard of this society before. However, after some consideration, I decided that the two hundred dollars scholarship was enough of an incentive to join even if I did not get any other benefits from the organization. I filled out the application, wrote a personal statement and sent forty-five dollars along with my application.
Just recently, I attended Alpha Lambda Delta’s initiation ceremony where the winner of the scholarship was announced. I was not the scholarship winner. However, after the initiation ceremony, my attitude towards the honors society underwent a positive change. I suddenly felt confident that joining the society was the right decision and that it would benefit me later on in my academic career. Furthermore, I refused to converse about the society with people who were saying that joining the society was a waste of time and money because the society is not even recognized by the university.
Analysis of Exnerience
My apparently illogical change in attitude towards Alpha Lambda Delta can be explained using the cognitive dissonance theory. I had initially joined the honors society in the hope of receiving the scholarship. Other than that, I believed that the application was a waste of forty~ five dollars and the effort of filling out the application.
However, I did not receive the scholarship. There was no further justification for applying to the society. My attitude had been negative towards the society, yet I put the effort and money into applying for it. One thought, I think applying for Alpha Lambda Delta is a waste of money and time, was discordant with another, I had filled out the application and paid the society fort .five dollars. The second of these could not be denied, since that was objective fact, so the dissonance could only be relieved by changing the first: Alpha Lambda Delta is not a bad society. The recognition of being in the society can help me later on in my academic career.
Through the insufficient-justification effect—the change in attitude that occurs because, without the change, the person cannot justify his already completed action—I changed my attitude towards Alpha Lambda Delta from a negative to a positive one.

Furthermore, I even refused to listen to other people when they were telling me that I had wasted my money and that my university did not recognize Alpha Lambda Delta. My behavior is known as avoiding dissonant information. “One way to avoid dissonance is to avoid situations in which we might discover facts or ideas that run counter to our current views” (Gray, 1999, p.511). Since I now believed that Alpha Lambda Delta was a great honors society that will benefit me, information that the university did not recognize the society contradicts my belief and would cause dissonance. In order to prevent this from happening, I avoided the dissonant information all together by refusing to converse with those who were trying to tell me the dissonant information.
Conclusion
By learning about such phenomena as social facilitation, social interference and cognitive dissonance, I gained great insight into my own behavior. Social facilitation and social interference is part of the bigger psychology topic of social influence which deals with how others influence our behavior. This was explicitly demonstrated by the effect of an audience on my piano performance. Cognitive dissonance is part of social cognition, which deals with how our own thoughts affect the way we behave. This concept, although less explicitly, was demonstrated by my change in attitude towards Alpha Lambda Delta after I joined the society.