Social Loafing

10 Key excerpts on "Social Loafing"

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  Managing Organizational Deviance

  • Roland E. Kidwell, Christopher L. Martin, Roland Kidwell, Christopher Lee Martin(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Shirking and job neglect can occur in virtually any context. The next two forms of withholding effort, however, are unique to work groups. The common feature of these two forms of withholding effort is a group performance context structured in such a way that there is great difficulty in identifying individual contributions. Social Loafing Social Loafing occurs in a group context and can be defined as a tendency to reduce effort because the nature of the focal task makes it impossible for others to determine individual contribution (Kerr & Bruun, 1983). In a meta-analytic review of Social Loafing research, Karau and Williams (1993) noted that the phenomenon has been observed on cognitive (e.g., brainstorming), physical (e.g., rope pulling, shouting), evaluative (e.g., ratings of performance), and perceptual (e.g., computer simulations) tasks. That same body of research has generated six somewhat interrelated explana-tions for the presence of Social Loafing. Social impact theory (Latané, 1981) pro-posed that Social Loafing occurs when a request for effort is made of multiple “targets” rather than of a single target. This is similar to the predictions of Jackson and Williams (1985), whose arousal reduction explanation posits that the presence of others is “drive reducing”; that is, the fact that other employees are involved reduces the pressure on a single employee to perform. A third explanation involves whether or not individuals can “hide in the crowd” as opposed to having their con-tributions easily identified (e.g., Davis, 1969; Williams, Harkins, & Latané, 1981). Fourth, the dispensability of effort view (Kerr & Bruun, 1983) suggests that indi-viduals will loaf when they conclude that their own effort is not essential to the pro-duction of the group’s work.

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  Organizational Behavior

  • Michael A. Hitt, C. Chet Miller, Adrienne Colella, Maria Triana(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Second, if associates, when working in teams, expect their teammates to loaf, they may reduce their own efforts to establish an equitable division of labor. 102 In this case, individual team members do not have a team identity and place their own good (working less) over the good of the team. Finally, when many individuals are working on a task, some may feel dispensable and believe their own contributions will not matter. 103 social facilitation effect Improvement in individual performance when others are present. Social Loafing A phenom- enon wherein people put forth less effort when they work in teams than when they work alone. 376 CHAPTER 11 Groups and Teams This is likely to happen when individuals think they have low ability and cannot perform as well as other team members. 104 Research on shirking supports these explanations. In one study, individuals were asked to pull alone as hard as possible on a rope attached to a strain gauge. They averaged 138.6 pounds of pressure while tugging on the rope. When the same individuals pulled on the rope in groups of three, however, they exerted only 352 pounds of pressure, an average of 117.3 pounds each. In groups of eight, the individual average dropped even lower, to an aston- ishing 68.2 pounds of pressure. This supports the first explanation of Social Loafing—that the less identifiable the individual’s output is, the more the individual loafs. 105 If the people with the least physical strength decrease their pressure the most, then there would also be support for the dispensability explanation. In a second study, participants were expected to work on a group task. Some of the subjects were told by a co-worker (a confederate of the researchers) that the co-worker expected to work as hard on the group task as she had on an individual task. Other partic- ipants were told that the co-worker expected to work less hard on the group task than on the individual task.

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  Social Context and Cognitive Performance

  Towards a Social Psychology of Cognition

  • Pascal Huguet, Jean-Marc Monteil(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  One must indeed recognize that not a single explanation currently allows one to integrate the whole set of results in the field of Social Loafing. In this field, as in the area of social facilitation, most hypotheses explain only one aspect among others of the phenomenon observed, and not the phenomenon in its entire complexity.

  Explaining Social Loafing

  When the contributions of each member of a group are combined, the group output does not point to any given individual effort. Impossible to identify, this effort cannot be reinforced in any way, neither positively nor negatively. This is why, according to Latané et al.(1979), individuals tend to neglect collective work by comparison with more individual tasks.

  Social Loafing indeed disappears when performance is individually identifiable (Williams, Harkins, & Latané, 1981). More than social visibility as such, however, it is the very exposure to an external evaluation (Harkins, 1987; Harkins & Jackson, 1985), perhaps even to a self-evaluation (Harkins & Szymanski, 1988, 1989; Szymanski & Harkins, 1987) that seems decisive. Whether they entail a personal or a categorical comparison, the anticipation of self-related evaluative events eliminates Social Loafing. We should not, however, rest on these findings.

  As noted by Comer (1995), “it is not simply the potential for evaluation, but actual evaluation itself that is operative in real groups” (p.658). It would thus be unwise to keep on studying Social Loafing outside the individual’s working group experiences. Indeed, the meaning given to the presence of others and to its evaluative potential (cf. Chapters 3 to 6 ) can depend on the history of various intra-group relations, evaluations, and comparisons.

  It is true that Social Loafing is not exclusively a matter pertaining to this potential. In keeping with Olson’s (1987 [1966]) intuitions, this particular type of social inhibition also depends on the perceived probability that somebody else will efficiently handle the problem or the task in hand (Weldon & Mustari, 1988). For this reason, the inhibition in question may very well disappear in cases where individuals perceive their own efforts as unique or as non-redundant when combined with those of others (Harkins & Petty, 1982; Williams & Karau, 1991; Williams, Karau, & Bourgeois, 1993). But here also the individual’s experience may play a part.

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  Group Dynamics

  • Donelson Forsyth(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Even if we work hard, others may not, and the group may fail. Moreover, even if the group does succeed, we personally may not benefit much from the group ’ s good performance. Earning a good grade on a project completed by a group may not be as satisfying as earning a good grade on a project that we complete working on our own. Karau and Williams tested the CEM ’ s predictions in a meta-analysis. Their review of 78 studies sup-ported their basic theoretical contention that loafing is reduced if individuals ’ expectations for success are high and they feel that the goal they are seeking is a valuable one. They also identified a number of other consistencies that emerged across studies. For example, loafing was greater among men than women, in Western countries compared to Eastern countries, and for simple tasks rather than complex tasks. Is Your Group at Risk for Social Loafing? Even in the best groups members may not be per-forming up to their potential; not because members are having difficulty working as a team, but because Social Loafing steals away their motivation. Asking members if they are working as hard as they can will not provide you with valid information about loafing, since most people don ’ t notice that they are not working as hard in the group as they would if they were alone. Instead, look for the warning signs of lost motivation listed here. Instructions: From the many groups to which you belong, identify the one where members are working to achieve a collective goal of some type, such as a team at work, a study group, or even a group of friends planning a social event. Then put a check by each item that accurately describes your experiences in this group. Identifiability q People who work hard in this group don ’ t get credit for that. q This group doesn ’ t keep track of who does what. q Most people in this group don ’ t have any specific responsibilities. Free-riding q Some members are not contributing very much to this group.

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  The SAGE Handbook of Social Psychology

  Concise Student Edition

  • Michael A Hogg, Joel Cooper, Michael A Hogg, Joel Cooper(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  (1998) found that performance dete-riorated over time when subjects were asked to work continuously for twenty hours without sleep on a variety of tasks. Performance decrements were held partially in check when subjects worked individually or were provided with individual feedback, but in the group condition social-loafing effects strength-ened over time regardless. The uniqueness of contributions is also impor-tant. Harkins and Petty (1982) found that Social Loafing was most likely to occur on tasks in which there was a chance that one’s efforts would duplicate those of other group members, rendering one’s own inputs at least partially unnecessary. This finding also held up meta-analytically across studies (Karau and Williams, 1993). These results are 302 The Sage Handbook of Social Psychology consistent both with the CEM and with Kerr’s dispensability perspective. Group cohesion Another factor influencing the value attached to the task is the degree to which individuals like, value, or strongly identify with the group they are working for. Several studies have found that Social Loafing can be eliminated when individuals are working with close friends (Karau and Williams, 1997) or in cohesive groups (Karau and Hart, 1998). The value of the group was also inversely related to Social Loafing in the Karau and Williams (1993) meta-analysis. These findings suggest that enhancing the importance of the group to the individuals within can reduce Social Loafing under some conditions. However, future research is needed to determine the potential constraints on these findings and to evalu-ate the implications of different types of cohesion (cf. Mullen and Copper, 1994; Zaccaro and McCoy, 1988). Another way to enhance concern with group out-comes is to activate or make salient individuals’ social identification with the group.

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  International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working

  • Michael A. West, Dean Tjosvold, Ken G. Smith, Michael A. West, Dean Tjosvold, Ken G. Smith(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  The extent to which individuals loaf is often not large, but the effect is consistent (in 79 per cent of the compared instances). The fact that the extent to which individuals loaf is often not large does not imply that it is an unimportant problem. Apparently the phenomenon occurs consistently on collective tasks. Suppose that in most teams in organizations effort reductions of 10 per cent occur, then the phenomenon per team may be limited in scope, but across all teams this may nevertheless constitute a considerable loss for an organization. Karau and Williams list, on the basis of their meta-analysis, the variables that influence Social Loafing. These variables are of influence on Social Loafing because they influence perceived instrumentality or outcome value. Karau and Williams do not detail this any further. The expectancy that individual effort leads to individual performance is a back-ground condition in Karau and Williams’s model. If such an expectation does not exist, individuals do not exert effort anyway, whether they work on an individual task or on a collective task. Below, I will further detail the role of the mediating mechanisms of in-strumentality and outcome value and formulate specific hypotheses about which variable influences which mediating mechanism. Where relevant I will add selected references that appeared after Karau and Williams wrote their meta-analysis in 1993, to bring their review up to date. EVALUATION POTENTIAL Individuals tend to loaf less when their contributions can be evaluated than when they cannot be evaluated (e.g. Gagne & Zuckerman, 1999; George, 1992; Harkins, 1987; Hoeksema-van Orden, Gaillard, & Buunk, 1998; Price, 1987). When the individual contribution of a group member cannot be distinguished from those of others and, as a result, cannot be identified and evaluated, group members can hide in a team.

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  Group Performance And Interaction

  • Craig D Parks, Lawrence J Sanna(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 7 ). According to Shepperd, proposed solutions to social motivation losses depend on the nature of the problem. He argues persuasively that the main problem for Social Loafing is that individual contributions go unrewarded (or punished) when working collectively. Therefore, in order to effectively eliminate Social Loafing, one needs to provide incentives for contributing. These incentives may be external (e.g., economic rewards or sanctions—or external evaluation) or internal (e.g., pride, duty—or personal involvement) and can occur on either individual or collective levels. For free riding, the main problem is that people perceive their contributions to be unneeded or dispensable. To eliminate free riding, then, one must make contributions seem indispensable, such as making contributions appear critical, unique, or essential. Finally, the main problem for suckers is that they perceive their contributions as too costly. One can therefore decrease the physical (e.g., time, energy, or other resources) or psychological (e.g., inequity or other feelings of dissatisfaction) costs to eliminate the sucker effect. Al-though all solutions do not always fit so simply into this framework, Shep-perd’s proposals hold a lot of promise in helping people to think about and to deal with Social Loafing, free-riding, and sucker effects, and social motivational losses.

  Social Compensation: Making Up for Others’ Inadequacies

  Thus far we have focused a great deal on how individual members lose motivation and put forth little effort when working in groups—they socially loaf, free ride, and otherwise avoid being a sucker. Let’s face it: All of this seems to present a fairly cynical picture of people when performing in groups. How-ever, probably all of us can think of situations where we were extremely motivated when working together. In fact, we have maybe even performed more than our “fair share” of the workload to make up for other member’s shortcomings. This may have been particularly true, for instance, if other group members were relatives or friends. There may be a positive side to it all. Research on social compensation

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  Misbehaviour and Dysfunctional Attitudes in Organizations

  • A. Sagie, S. Stashevsky, M. Koslowsky, A. Sagie, S. Stashevsky, M. Koslowsky(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Another suggestion is offered by the search for meaning theory. This argues that when an individual group member achieves his/her own important goal, by means of the collective task he/she is likely to ignore 94 Understanding Social Loafing the poor performance of the other group members. The social comparison explanation offers no explanation for this phenomenon. Individualism/collectivism Earley (1993) and Erez and Somech (1996) found that when collectivists work together in a group, SL is minimized because the group members respect one another and are likely to identify their own success with that of their group. Conversely, when the group is composed entirely of members with an individualistic outlook, the level of SL will be high because group members feel that they cannot influence the group outcome and that their separate contribution will not be recognized. In addition, it was found that when people with a collectivist outlook work within a group of people whose values are individualistic, they are likely to practise SL. This is because their fellow group members have individualistic values and so they cannot trust them to put their best efforts into the group task (Erez and Earley, 1993). Erez and Somech (1996) compared patterns of work behaviour among Israeli urban group members with those of members of an Israeli kibbutz, i.e. a self-managing collective village. They found that while urban group members practise more SL, among kibbutz members there was no difference in perform- ance between the individual and the group tasks. Earley (1989) found that American managers practised SL, whereas Chinese managers did not. Meta-analysis of SL studies revealed that work groups composed of people from Western countries show greater levels of SL as compared with groups from Eastern countries (Karau and Williams, 1993).

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  Social Psychology

  Revisiting the Classic Studies

  • Joanne R. Smith, S Alexander Haslam, Joanne R. Smith, S Alexander Haslam, S. Alexander Haslam(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  1 Social Facilitation and Social Loafing Revisiting Triplett’s competition studies Steven J. Karau Kipling D. Williams

  Background

  More than 110 years ago, at the dawn of experimental psychology research, a promising master’s-level graduate student and enthusiastic sportsman by the name of Norman Triplett decided to focus his thesis research on the topic of competition. A careful analysis of the records from competitive cycling events showed that riders were quicker when racing against other cyclists or when having a group of riders available as pacemakers than when they were simply racing against the clock alone. To study competition in the laboratory, Triplett asked children to work as hard as possible on a physical task that involved turning fishing reels, both alone and in competition with another child. Triplett found that competition seemed to have an energizing effect, leading many of the children to turn the reels more quickly. These results suggested that the presence of a competitor might lead most individuals to try harder and exert more effort than they would when working alone.

  Triplett published his findings in the American Journal of Psychology in a thorough and engaging 1898 article entitled ‘The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition’. This article identifies a fundamental question at the very heart of the field: How does the presence of other people affect us as individuals? This general question eventually evolved into two large research literatures on phenomena that have come to be known as social facilitation and Social Loafing. Social facilitation refers to a tendency for the presence of other people (as co-actors or observers) to enhance our performance on simple or well-learned tasks, but to reduce it on complex or unfamiliar tasks (Geen, 1991; Zajonc, 1965). Social Loafing

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  Encyclopedia of Social Psychology

  • Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Group members may also be less motivated in groups than they would be if they were working by themselves. Productivity in Task-Performing Groups When someone works in a large group and each indi-vidual ’ s performance is combined with that of others, a person may be less motivated to work hard on behalf of the group. This type of motivation loss is known as Social Loafing or free riding . Social Loafing has been found to increase with the size of the group, the extent to which a person’s performance is anonymous, and the degree to which the task is seen as challenging. According to Kipling Williams and Steven Karau, a person’s motivation level in groups depends on the extent to which he or she believes the group goal can be attained and how much the person values this goal. That is, as long as group members perceive that there is an incentive to work hard, they will not loaf. This incentive to work hard can be increased by evaluating the work of group members individually. Generally there is a strong relationship between an individual’s level of effort in the group and the personal conse-quences for this level of effort. When group members are accountable to one another or in competition with one another and have challenging goals, they may in fact have increased motivation in groups. Individuals may also compen-sate for the lack of effort on the part of other group members if they particularly value the group goal. Similarly, a low-ability group member may increase his or her effort if the group member thinks that a small increase in his or her effort will be important to the success of the group. When group members work together, they have to mesh their various talents and perspectives in addition to coordinating their group activities. Groups have to decide who does what, when, and how. This is seen clearly in sports teams and highly trained military units that require careful coordination for success.

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