Social facilitation effects resulting from locus of control using human and computer experimenters

摘要

The present experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that people with an internal locus of control (Rotter, 1966) will perform equally well in a paired associate verbal learning task regardless of whether the trials are administered by a computer or human experimenter, while people with an external locus of control will perform better when learning trials are administered by a human experimenter. A computer and a human experimenter were used to test 60 subjects who had been divided into either internal or external locus of control groups in a one-trial-to-learn paired associate task. An analysis of variance confirmed the study's hypothesis, revealing a significant interaction between subjects' locus of control and their performance in the two testing conditions. Implications for the use of the computer in psychological research are discussed.