Norman Triplett

Who was Norman Triplett?

Norman Triplett was a psychologist at Indiana University. In 1898, he wrote what is now recognized as the first published study in the field of social psychology. His experiment was on the social facilitation effect. Triplett noticed that cyclists tend to have faster times when riding in the presence of a counterpart as opposed to riding alone. He then demonstrated this effect in a controlled, laboratory experiment and concluded that children perform a simple lab task faster in pairs than when performing by themselves. He arranged for 40 children to play a game that involved turning a small fishing reel as quickly as possible. He found that those who played the game in pairs turned the reel faster than those who were alone.Triplett's design involved the creation of two groups with the sequence of trials differing for each. Group A: alone, competition, alone, competition, alone, competition. Group B: alone, alone, competition, alone, competition, alone. The rationale for this design was to eliminate practice and fatigue effects. He concluded that moving from isolation to a group context can reduce our sense of uniqueness, but at the same time it can enhance our ability to perform simple tasks rapidly.