The first experiment to suggest a possible decrement in individual motivation as a result of working in a group was conducted over 70 years ago by a German psychologist named Max Ringelmann (Latane et al 1979; Karau & Williams 1993). In the experiment, he had people pull on a rope either alone or in groups. He noticed that, as more and more people are added 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. In addition, the results show an inverse relationship between the size of a group and the magnitude of group member's individual contribution to the accomplishment of the task. Latane et al. (1979) continued Ringelmann study by conducting an experiment in which they had participants clap and shout, either alone or as a member of a group. Researchers measured how loud the participants clapped and shouted in various conditions and found that participants in the group condition clapped and shouted significantly less loudly than those in the alone condition. The researchers reasoned that social loafing occurred because people assume that other members of the group will not pull their own weight, and, therefore, they should not work any harder than their fellow group members. In addition, individuals may feel that, when in a group, their individual performance will not be individually evaluated; if they slack off, they will not be blamed, and if they place a great deal of effort on the task, they will not be rewarded for their work.
Charbonnier et al. (1998) looked at personality characteristics as a function of social loafing. Their study measured how people’s beliefs about their feelings of uniqueness affected their inclination to socially loaf. Their findings suggest that people who scored high on feelings of uniqueness were more likely to expend less effort when working as a group.
Duffy and Shaw (2000) carried aa study, in which the participants were 566 upper-division undergraduate students enrolled in group-based classes. The participants were grouped into 143 groups ranging from three to seven members and were assessed over a 16-week term. They found that envy in a group would increase social loafing and diminish group cohesion and potency that would, in turn, diminish group effectiveness. Parrott and Smith (1993, as cited in Duffy and Shaw 2000) believe that envy include avoidance of the comparison person(s), hostility, and attempts to prevent a rival’s successful performance. Social loafing in relation to this represents an ideal method of simultaneously sabotaging a rival’s performance within the group and manifesting hostility in a passive-aggressive manner (Duffy and Shaw 2000).
Harkins and Petty (1982, as cited in Charbonnier et al. 1998) found that as tasks become more difficult and participants perceive they can make a unique contribution to the task, social loafing decreases. They had participants do a brainstorming task in which they had to generate uses for an object. The object was either determined to be difficult to generate uses for or easy to generate uses for. Participants in the difficult object-group condition generated more uses for the object and the uses were judged to be more unique. This finding implied that social loafing occurs when people feel that the task is boring or mundane and that their contribution to the group is not unique. In addition, the researches found that individuals work just as hard collectively as coactively when their individual inputs to the group product are either not redundant with the inputs of others.
Lack of identifiably is another contributing factor to social loafing. The theory of identifiably states that when an individual’s performance is combined with others so that their contribution is unknown, they will expend less effort. However, when their contribution is identifiable, the social loafing effect decreases substantially (Williams et al., 1979).Low expectations of coworkers also increases social loafing (Williams & Karau, 1991, as cited in Guerin 1999). They found that if participants thought their coworkers were incompetent, they were more likely to loaf. This contradicts the assumption that competent people will work harder to compensate for their less competent coworkers.
From these materials, the following condition may reduce the occurrence of social loafing within groups: when individual contributions are identifiable by fellow group members or the party that evaluates their contribution; when subjects are personally involved in the task; and when the task is challenging and unique. In an assignment that involves groups working on University poster presentation, the structure of the assignment can be designed to be proportional to the size of the groups so that individuals alone cannot accomplish (Latene et al., 1979). Examples of this would be to have smaller groups and increase difficulty. This would result in group members finding that the task is challenging and involving. In addition, setting themes that the groups can relate to their studies or interest would make the task more appealing. Additional tasks that require individual effort such as writing a personal reflection on the assignment or requiring group members to design a resource each that compliments their group’s poster, can be added to their assessment. This would allow the group members to be accessed as a group and individually. Rewards can be used as incentives to motivate the group members thus reducing social loafing. Examples of this would be allowing posters from groups with presentations of exceptionally good standards to be placed in allocated places to be viewed by fellow colleagues or the public, or rewarding them with chocolates or something else that the group would find to be beneficial . Evaluators (e.g. lecturers) can also reduce the occurrence of social loafing by encouraging group members to consult them frequently regarding problems or if they find members of their groups social loafing. This would allow the evaluators detect envy (which leads to social loafing) or social loafing and prevent or overcome it before it further progresses.
In summary, social loafing can be reduced within a group working on University poster presentations or in any other settings. However, most of the existing literatures available were from experiments on proving variables that influence social loafing. Therefore, more research in the future should be done to find out methods that effectively reduce or eliminate social loafing.
References
Charbonnier, E., Huquet, P., Brauer, M. & Monteil, J. (1998) Social loafing and self beliefs: People’s collective effort depends on the extent to which they distinguish themselves as better than others. Social Behavior and Personality 26: 329-340. Retrieved 9 May 2004. from:
Duffy, M.K., & Shaw, J.D. (2000) The Salieri Syndrome: Consequences of envy in groups. Small Groups Research, 31(1), 2-23.
Guerin, B. (1999). Social Behaviour as determined by different arrangement of social consequences: Social Loafing, social facilitation, deindividuation, and modified social loafing. The Psychological Record, 49(4), 565-578.
Karau, S.J., & Williams, K.D. (1993). Social loafingL A mera-analytic review and theoractical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 681-786.
Latane, B. Wiliams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 822-832.
Weiten, W. (2004). Psychology: Themes and Variations (5th ed), (pp. 685-686). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
