Social Facilitation
The fact that the observation of action can prime a similar response in the observer, and that the degree to which the observed action facilitates a similar response in the observer cast some light into the phenomenon called social facilitation, first described by Robert Zajonc, which accounts for the demonstration that the presence of other people can affect individual performance. A number of studies have demonstrated that watching facial expression of emotions prompts the observer to resonate with the state of another individual, with the observer activating the motor representations and associated autonomic and somatic responses that stem from the observed target.
Read more about this topic: Motor Cognition
Famous quotes containing the word social:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)