Social facilitation effects in online coaction: the moderating role of social comparison direction

Abstract

Online and face-to-face coactions are widely used work organization modes. This study aims to investigate the effect of social comparison direction on task performance when people coact online. A total of 40 individuals were recruited to participate in a 2 (coaction type: online and face to face) × 3 (social comparison direction: upward, downward and no comparison) × 2 (phase: pre-comparison and post-comparison) within-subject experiment. The participants performed visual search tasks while their response time and search accuracy rates were measured. Results showed that the participants were reported to perform faster when they coacted online than face to face. The upward comparison led to a stronger social facilitation effect than the downward and no comparison directions, either in online or face-to-face coaction. These findings provide practical implications in the design of coaction modes for groups and teams working remotely.

KEYWORDS:

• coaction
• social comparison
• social facilitation effect
• organization design
• work mode

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number: 71901033]; Beijing Natural Science Foundation [grant number: 9204029].