Perceived time in the presence of others: Further arguments for an attentional view of social facilitation

Although the effects of the presence of others on behavior constitute one of the oldest topics studied in social psychology, the reason why these effects occur is still the subject of scientific debate. Three hypotheses are commonly cited: (1) the presence of others facilitates dominant responses by increasing arousal, (2) it captures attention, or (3) it increases the efforts of those being observed. Few studies have attempted to distinguish between these explanations, and those that have done so have used a specific paradigm: the Stroop task. In the present study, we proposed an alternative approach based on the use of the temporal bisection task. In three studies, the bisection results showed a temporal shortening effect in social presence (that of an experimenter) consistent with an attentional distraction-related effect. Our results also provided the first evidence that this effect may be stronger when the attentional conflict between the task and the presence is unimodal (e.g., visual task and visual presence) rather than cross-modal (e.g., auditive task and visual presence). They also suggested that the social presence effect might be similar to that produced by a mechanical distractor, although the social nature of the distractor increased the attention-related effect. We discuss how variations in the presence and behavior of the experimenter could contribute to the difficulty of replicating certain studies in experimental psychology, given that the social presence of the experimenter is generally assumed to be innocuous.