Social Inhibition of Behavior

Abstract A previous experiment in the United States and Australia found that students decreased the number of body movements, hand movements, and paralin-guistic vocalizations while in the passive presence of another person. This finding was replicated in both a laboratory study and a field setting. The effect did not vary with the seriousness of the experiment, but it did disappear when the person present could not watch the subject. In the laboratory, the norm is to work quietly and efficiently, and subjects did this more when a confederate was present. The same finding occurred in a library where a similar norm operates.