Replicating Roaches: A Preregistered Direct Replication of Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman’s (1969) Social-Facilitation Study

Fifty years ago, Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman (1969) conducted a famous experiment on social enhancement and inhibition of performance in cockroaches. A moderating effect of task difficulty on the effect of the presence of an audience, as revealed by impaired performance in complex tasks and enha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science Vol. 31; no. 3; pp. 332 - 337
Main Authors: Halfmann, Emma, Bredehöft, Janne, Häusser, Jan Alexander
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.03.2020
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Animals
Audiences
Between-subjects design
Cockroaches
Complex tasks
Inhibition
Maze Learning
Psychological aspects
Reproducibility
Social Facilitation
Task performance
Task Performance and Analysis
replication
social inhibition
preregistered
cockroach
open materials
social facilitation
open data
Zajonc
ISSN:0956-7976, 1467-9280, 1467-9280
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Fifty years ago, Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman (1969) conducted a famous experiment on social enhancement and inhibition of performance in cockroaches. A moderating effect of task difficulty on the effect of the presence of an audience, as revealed by impaired performance in complex tasks and enhanced performance in simple tasks, was presented as the major conclusion of this research. However, the researchers did not test this interaction statistically. We conducted a preregistered direct replication using a 2 (audience: present vs. absent) × 2 (task difficulty: runway vs. maze) between-subjects design. Results revealed main effects for task difficulty, with faster running times in the runway than the maze, and for audience, with slower running times when the audience was present than when it was absent. There was no interaction between the presence of an audience and task difficulty. Although we replicated the social-inhibition effect, there was no evidence for a social-facilitation effect.
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ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797620902101