A Test of the Social Facilitation Theories of Cottrell and Zajonc in a Coaction Situation

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Abstract
Zajonc' theory that the presence of a coactor is suffi cient to facilitate a dominant response was compared with Cot rell's theory that facilitation does not occur unless coactors compete. During 150 baseline trials 80 males individually predic ted the occurrence of two stimuli on a PDP-12 computer screen. For 150 test trials subjects were divided among alone-noncompetition, alone-competition, dyad-noncompetition, and dyad-competition con ditions. In addition, an alone-incentive group was paid 1c per correct prediction in order to assess the effects of drive on the dominant prediction. The results supported Cottrell: only the alone-incentive and dyad-competition groups showed facilitation of the dominant prediction from baseline to test session.