Pascal Huguet

Productivity Loss in Performance Groups: People Who See Themselves as Average Do Not Engage in'Social Loafing

The authors predicted that individuals who see themselves as average (e.g., who have a generalized belief in being no better or worse than others) do not engage in social loafing, unlike those who see themselves as generally superior to others. As expected, study participants who felt uniquely superior expended less effort when working collectively than when working coactively on an easy task, but they actually worked harder collectively than coactively on a more challenging task. Such effects did not occur in participants who perceived themselves as average. Taken together, these findings provide further support for S. J. Karau and K. D. Williamss (1993) collective effort model. They also suggest that what people come to believe about the relation between the self and others is a crucial factor in collective work contexts.

The Influence of Social Comparison with Less Fortunate Others on Task Performance: The Role of Gender Motivations or Appropriate Norms.

French male and female children performed a cognitive-perceptual task while anticipating or not public comparisons of their score with probably less fortunate others at a time when concerns about fitting in to social expectations were maximized. As predicted, boys performed better and girls poorer when social comparison was anticipated than when it was not. This suggested that task performance can depend on the compatibility of the social context of cognition with gender motivations or appropriate norms.

The social context of human learning: Some prospects for the study of socio-cognitive regulations

Numerous studies conducted by social, cognitive, and educational psychologists suggest that learning, cognitive functioning and development, and education are fundamentally embedded in a complex social matrix. Recent studies have demonstrated the influence on cognitive performances of several basic social variables, including evaluative pressure, group membership, situations of personal or categorical social comparison, and the academic value of the task. These findings clearly point out the necessity of considering the autobiographical dimension of the individual to explain this influence, an idea which is clearly consistent with other results obtained in studies on scholastic self-schemas. The present paper shows that the influence of the social context of cognition cannot be explained unless it is viewed from a sociocognitive perspective which considers the autobiographical memory of the individual.