Back to basics: Socially facilitated situated cognition

Abstract

A widely ignored finding in social facilitation suggests that the mere presence of others increases the “spreading out” of one’s thoughts (Allport, 1920). Here, we revisit this finding and expand upon it using a situated cognition perspective. Experiment 1 approached the spreading-out-of-thought effect using the same free-association task as Allport. Results replicated and extended previous findings. Compared to an alone condition, co-action and mere presence activated more associations, being that these associations are more context-related and more distant in the target word associative network. Assuming that this spreading-out-of-thought effect arises from an increased salience of context-related processing, we tested this hypothesis using the Framed-Line Test paradigm in Experiment 2. Results showed that, as expected, co-action increased accuracy of estimation judgments that required incorporation of contextual information in processing. These results support and extend Allport’s view that presence of others broadens our thoughts. We discuss this idea, suggesting that social contexts may prompt cognition to be more situated.