Distractionconflict

Distraction-conflict theory is a social-psychological framework that explains how the presence of others can affect an individual's performance. It proposes that others introduce a distraction that competes for attention, creating cognitive conflict and increasing arousal. This attentional competition is said to underlie changes in performance observed in social contexts, such as the social facilitation phenomenon.

When others are present, attention is divided between the task at hand and the people present. The resulting distraction and conflict produce physiological arousal, which then amplifies the organism's dominant response. As a result, performance tends to improve on easy, well-practiced tasks but deteriorate on difficult or novel ones, especially those that require precise or controlled processing. The magnitude of the effect can be influenced by task visibility, the salience of other people, and the individual's motivation.

Empirical support comes from experiments showing better performance on simple tasks and worse performance on complex tasks in the presence of others. The theory emphasizes attention and cognitive load rather than solely evaluation or motivation.

Critics note that distraction-conflict does not account for all social-facilitation patterns; some studies show no reliable effect of presence, or effects driven by evaluation concerns or other arousal sources. The framework is often integrated with alternative explanations to capture the variability across tasks and settings.

See also: Social facilitation, Arousal, Attention, Cognitive load. Distraction-conflict remains a foundational concept in the study of how group contexts shape individual performance.