Social Loafing

February 2, 2006
 Course Lectures Online
Slides available on my website:
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 The Presence of Others Helps:
Or Does It?
Social Facilitation:
The presence of an audience increases arousal which
facilitates performance on problems that are well-
learned and therefore simple, but diminishes
performance on tasks that are not well-learned and
therefore difficult.
Social facilitation occurs when people are
working alone, but in the presence of an
audience.
 Case of the rope pulling contest
QUESTION: Is social facilitation observed
when people are working as a member of a
team?
Rope Pulling:
As you add more and more people to a group
pulling on a rope, the total force exerted by the
group rose, but the average force exerted by each
group member declined. (Ringlemann)
 Social Loafing

BASIC PRINCIPLE

The larger the number of individuals whose

work is combined on a group task, the smaller is
each individuals contribution.
Social Loafing or Coordination Loss?
Experimental Confound: Problem may not be
the reduction of individual effort, but poor
coordination between members of the group.
Example: People may pull the rope in different
directions at different times, so the group does
not capitalize on the efforts of each individual
member of the group.
Alternative explanation must be eliminated.
 Ruling Out Coordination Loss
Subjects made to think they were pulling
together, when in fact they were pulling alone.
Shouting together when actually shouting alone.
Result: Subjects reduced their task effort when
they were tricked into thinking that they were
working as a team when they were actually
working alone.
Counteracting the Tendency to Loaf
How can we avert social loafing to make groups
more productive?
Identifiability: People are motivated when they
believe that their work is identifiable and
separable from the work of others.
Divide tasks
Assign roles
Measure individual inputs
Limit group size
 Identifiability: A few examples
MOTIVATING TEAM PERFORMANCE:

People shout louder when each group member

is wearing a microphone and believe that their
personal output can be measured.

Football coaches individually film and evaluate

each player.
 Cross-Cultural Differences
Question: Does social loafing occur more often
in individualistic or in collectivistic cultures?
Earley (1989) showed that:
American groups (individualistic) loafed more than
Chinese groups (collectivistic).
Accountability reduced loafing in American groups
but not in Chinese groups.
 Group Brainstorming
Shouting and rope-pulling are fun, but does
social loafing influence anything important?
Brainstorming:
Brainstorming groups are an important source of
creativity in organizations.
Goal of brainstorming to come up with as many
different ideas as possible in a set amount of time.
Does social loafing occur in brainstorming groups?
 Class Demonstration
You were told to generate as many ideas for re-
doing the undergraduate lounge.
Group size was varied:
1, 2, 4, 8, 12
Prediction:
Total group output should increased with increasing
group size.
Number of ideas generated per person should
decrease with increasing group size.
Increasing Group Size, Increasing
Group Output
Number of Ideas Generated

80
70 72
67
60
48
50
40 34
30 25
20
10
0
1 2 4 8 12
Number of Group Members
But Decreasing Individual Input

Ideas Per Group Member

30
25 25
20
17
15 12
10 8
5 6

0
1 2 4 8 12
Number of Group Members
 Social Loafing?
Did you limit your contribution to the group
discussion? Why or why not?
Where there people who contributed more ideas
than others?
Was there some expectation or goal for how
many ideas you should personally contribute to
the group?
Are there alternative explanations other than social
loafing?
 Evaluation Apprehension
Did you limit your contributions to the group
discussion because you worried that people
would judge your ideas?
OR,
Did you limit your contribution to the group
discussion because you felt that no one was
paying any attention to how much you were
contributing?
 Production Blocking
Compared with working alone, individuals idea
generation is blocked while waiting their turn
to talk (everyone cant talk at once) and listening
to other people is distracting.

Did your group experience production blocking?

Based on the individuals output, group productivity
should have been much higher.
From the individual to the group

Production Blocking

600
500 504
400
300
224
200 112
100 28 56
0
1 2 4 8 18
Number of Group Members
 Conclusions
Are two heads better than one?
Do you think group work is useful, or might people
be better off just working alone?
Are there any benefits to group brainstorming
that are not captured by measuring the sheer
number of ideas?
How would you design a brainstorming group
given what you know about social facilitation
and social loafing?