Most of the motivation research we’ve covered so far in this chapter focuses on the individual. An individual person is struggling to control her diet, is being challenged on a laboratory task, or is being beeped in an experience sampling study. But much of motivation occurs in groups. Whether at work or at play, people are observed by others, compete with others, and team up with others. Let’s look, then, at interaction with others.

Back in the 1890s, psychologist Norman Triplett (1898) noticed something interesting about bicycle racers. When they rode as fast as possible on a track by themselves, they were slower than when they rode as fast as possible in a race with others. What he observed is a phenomenon known as social facilitation, a motivational phenomenon that occurs in groups. In social facilitation, the mere presence of other people improves people’s performance on tasks on which they are skilled (Aiello & Douthitt, 2001). Social facilitation does not make a person skilled; if you don’t know how to ride a bike, you won’t suddenly be able to ride if other people are watching. However, it does enhance motivation. If you’re a skilled bike rider and you’re trying to pedal at maximum speed, the presence of others—whether competitors racing against you, or just an audience watching you—will speed you up.

Triplett (1898) conducted an experiment to test the effects of others’ presence on motivation. Ironically, his own experiment did not provide strong evidence of social facilitation effects, a fact that only became clear when contemporary researchers analyzed his data with modern statistical methods that were lacking in his day (Stroebe, 2012). But the phenomenon is real; in many settings, social facilitation does boost motivation and performance.

Clear evidence of social facilitation effects came from a classic paper by the social psychologist Robert Zajonc (1965), whose review of social facilitation research accomplished three major goals. First, Zajonc showed that social facilitation occurs in not only humans, but also other organisms. Humans, rats, chickens—even insects—perform simple responses more quickly or strongly in the presence of other members of their species. Second, Zajonc provided an explanation, suggesting that the presence of others increases physiological arousal. Because all complex organisms experience varying states of arousal, social facilitation occurs across species. Third, Zajonc identified a circumstance in which social facilitation does not improve performance. It’s one we noted above: When you are not good at a task—when you’re just learning it and thus have not yet perfected the basic skills—the presence of an audience will not improve your performance. Social facilitation increases the strength of a dominant response, that is, the response that is an organism’s most likely response in a given setting. If you’re not skilled on a task, your dominant response might not help you to succeed, so an audience will not boost your performance.

Can you think of an exception to the social facilitation principle that the presence of others improves performance? This question might help: Have you ever worked on a group project for class and noticed that, while you were working hard on the project, somebody else in your group was playing video games? That person was displaying social loafing, a reduction in motivation on group tasks in which people work together. Groups often reduce the motivation of people who expect that, thanks to others’ efforts, the group is likely to succeed, even if they goof off (Karau & Williams, 1993).

If you’re like most people, a large percentage of your waking hours have been spent in a group setting in which you are supposed to be motivated to achieve: school. U.S. schoolchildren spend about 32.5 hours a week at school, plus more time doing homework (Juster, Ono, & Stafford, 2004).

MOTIVATION AND GRADES. How important is motivation to school achievement? You might think that grades are just a matter of smarts; maybe some kids have a lot of intelligence and get good grades, and motivation makes little difference. But consider the following study. At the beginning of an eighth-grade school year, researchers collected measures designed to predict children’s grades at the end of the school year (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005). One was a standard measure of intelligence (see Chapter 9). Others involved motivation—not just trying hard when working on school, but self-discipline, that is, the skills and motivation needed to avoid distractions and start working in the first place. The self-discipline measures included a behavioral test, ratings by teachers, and students’ own ratings of their abilities to control their emotions and follow rules. The researchers used both variables, intelligence and discipline, to predict grades.

The results are shown in Figure 11.9. If intelligence predicted grades and self-discipline were unimportant, then the line relating intelligence to grades would be steep, and the line relating self-discipline to grades would be flat. But the self-discipline line not only isn’t flat, it’s steeper than the intelligence line! Self-discipline was a more important predictor of grades than was intelligence (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005).

This study’s findings are consistent with other research. For example, in a study of high school students, study time was found to predict grades about as strongly as intelligence did (Keith, 1982).

INCREASING STUDENT MOTIVATION. How can teachers increase students’ motivation? Motivational processes you read about earlier in this chapter are relevant to the classroom (Covington, 2000). One important motivational process involves goals. Students who set a goal of learning and mastering material, rather than merely earning high grades, often achieve greater success (Ames, 1992; Nicholls, 1984). Goals are particularly important when students are struggling to learn material. Those aiming for high grades may worry that they aren’t smart enough, whereas those whose goal is to learn will recognize that the struggles are a natural part of learning (Dweck, 1986). The mindset program described earlier in this chapter, in which students are taught about how the brain makes new connections when learning, is designed in part to alter students’ goals (Dweck, 2006). Once students learn how the brain changes with experience, they may be less concerned about their current level of “smarts” and more focused on putting in the effort to learn material and develop a more powerful brain.

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Others emphasize that goals are only part of the story of motivation in schools. Students—like anyone—try to fit in with others and to maintain a sense of personal worth (Covington, 2000). Many students may not associate academic success with their personal worth, or may even live in settings in which school success is undervalued, or even disparaged, in their peer group. For example, the anthropologist John Ogbu explained that Black inner-city students in the United States live in a setting that must be understood historically: Due to a history of racial barriers, previous generations of family members could not experience the same path from school success to professional success that whites could experience. As a result, they may be less personally invested in school success, which in turn could lower their achievement. In general, people who have become part of a country against their will (through slavery or colonization) are less likely to share the belief, often held by people in the more powerful majority group, that everyone can “make it” in society by succeeding in school and following the rules of society (Ogbu & Simons, 1998).

After they’re done with school, most people spend much of their time in another group setting: work. Employment commonly immerses workers in complex organizations in which people work as teams—either in person, at work sites, or in “virtual teams” in today’s information-based workplace.

PAY. What motivates employees at work? At the risk of stating the obvious, a big part of the answer is pay. Yet there are some nonobvious facts about how pay motivates employees. Consider the question of what type of payment plan is best for motivating employees: pay based on (1) the amount of time an employee spends on a job, (2) the amount of work the employee produces, or (3) the success of the company as a whole? There is no single, correct answer in all cases. Different payment plans work best in different work settings (Helper, Kleiner, & Wang, 2010).

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GOALS. Success at work requires not only wanting to do well, but also knowing what to do. In job settings, employee motivation and performance are increased by the setting of goals. The goal-setting principles discussed earlier in this chapter have been applied extensively in work settings. Hundreds of studies show that goals that are specific—indicating exact levels of performance to be achieved—boost motivation and performance. Employees who are committed to specific job goals and who receive feedback on their progress toward those goals generally outperform those who have only vague goals, such as “do your best” on a job (Latham & Pinder, 2005).

LEADERSHIP STYLES. Another factor that can affect workplace motivation is leadership style, the typical behavior and overall approach to managing employees that is adopted by managers in charge of a work group. Early research on leadership styles contrasted (1) democratic styles, in which everyone (leader and subordinates) participates in setting organizational goals; (2) autocratic styles, in which the leader dictates what others do; and (3) laissez-faire styles, in which leaders are uninvolved in workers’ decision making (Lewin & Lippitt, 1938; Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939). More recent research has identified other styles. In transformational leadership, the leader seeks to gain the trust of workers and to inspire them to reach goals. In transactional leadership, the leader simply appeals to workers’ self-interest by providing rewards to them if they meet objectives (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & van Engen, 2003).

Although different styles may be effective in different types of groups, in general, transformational leadership has significant advantages. Inspiring transformational leadership predicts greater employee motivation and greater satisfaction with the leader (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). Interestingly, women in leadership roles are somewhat more likely to be transformational-style leaders than are men, who are more likely to engage in transactional leadership (Eagly et al., 2003).