Social loafing
Encyclopedia
In the social psychology
of groups, social loafing is the phenomenon of people exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group
than when they work alone. This is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes less productive than the combined performance of their members working as individuals, but should be distinguished from the coordination problems that groups sometime experience.
Social loafing is also associated with two concepts that are typically used to explain why it occurs: The "free-rider" theory
and the resulting "sucker effect", which is an individual’s reduction in effort in order to avoid pulling the weight of a fellow group member.
Research on social loafing began with rope pulling experiments by Ringelmann, who found that members of a group tended to exert less effort into pulling a rope than did individuals alone. In more recent research, studies involving modern technology, such as online and distributed groups, has also shown clear evidence of social loafing. Many of the causes of social loafing stem from an individual feeling that his or her effort will not matter to the group. Therefore, effective ways to reduce social loafing involve increasing the motivation of individual group members or improving their coordination.
's study. He found that when he asked a group of men to pull on a rope
, that they did not pull as hard collectively, as they did when each was pulling alone. This research did not distinguish whether it was the individuals putting in less effort or poor coordination within the group. In 1974, Alan Ingham and colleagues replicated Ringelmann's experiment using two types of groups: 1) Groups with real participants in groups of various sizes (consistent with Ringelmann's setup) or 2) Pseudo-groups with only one real participant. In the pseudo-groups, the researchers' assistants pretended to pull on the rope.
The results showed a decrease in the participant's performance, with groups of participants who all exerted effort suffering the largest declines. Because the pseudo-groups were isolated from coordination effects (since the researchers' confederates did not physically pull the rope), Ingham proved that communication alone did not account for the effort decrease, and that motivational losses were the more likely cause of the performance decline.
et al. replicated previous social loafing findings while demonstrating that the decreased performance of groups was attributable to reduced individual effort, distinct from coordination loss. They showed this by blindfolding male college students while making them wear headphones
that masked all noise. They then asked them to shout both in actual groups and pseudogroups in which they shouted alone but believed they were shouting with others. When subjects believed one other person was shouting, they shouted 82% as intensely as they did alone, but with five others, their effort decreased to 74%.
Latané et al. concluded that increasing the number of people in a group diminishes the relative social pressure on each person: "If the individual inputs are not identifiable the person may work less hard. Thus if the person is dividing up the work to be performed or the amount of reward he expects to receive, he will work less hard in groups."
by Karau and Williams, they propose the Collective Effort Model (CEM), which is used to generate predictions. The CEM integrates expectancy theories with theories of group-level social comparison and social identity
to account for studies that examine individual effort in collective settings. From a psychological state, it proposes that Expectancy multiplied by Instrumentality multiplied by Valence of Outcome produces the resulting Motivational Force.
Karau et al.'s findings conclude that social loafing occurs because there is usually a stronger perceived contingency between individual effort and valued outcomes when working individually. When working collectively, other factors frequently determine performance, and valued outcomes are also divided among all group members. All individuals are assumed to try to maximize the expected utility of their actions. The CEM also acknowledges that some valued outcomes do not depend on performance. For example, exerting strong effort when working on intrinsically meaningful tasks or with highly respected team members may result in self-satisfaction or approval from the group, even if the high effort had little to no impact on tangible performance outcomes.
Notable or novel findings by Karau and Williams following their implementation of the CEM include:
, and hypothesized that as group size and dispersion grew, the group’s work would be affected in the following areas: Members will contribute less in both quantity and quality, final group output will be of lower quality, and a group’s output will be affected both by individual factors and contextual factors.
A sample of 240 undergraduate business students were randomly split into forty teams (half of the teams were 4-person and half 8-person), and these teams were randomly assigned to either a collocated or distributed setting. The participants were to complete a task that asked them to act as a board of directors of a winery with an image problem. They were to find and discuss alternatives, and at the end submit their alternative with rationale. Collocated groups worked at a table together, while distributed groups did the same task at separate computers that allowed for electronic, networked communication. The same technology was used by both collocated and distributed groups.
Chidambaram and Tung found that group size matters immensely in a group’s performance. The smaller the group, the more likely each member is to participate, regardless of range (dispersed or collocated). The main difference stated between distributed and collocated groups is the social pressure to at least appear busy that is present in collocated groups. When others are present, people feel the need to look as if they are working hard, while those who are not in the presence of others do not.
and China
, two polar opposites in terms of culture
(with the U.S. being individualistic and China being collectivist), in order to determine if a difference in social loafing was present between the two types of cultures. Earley formed groups from both countries similar in demographics
and in time spent with each other (participants in each of the groups had known each other for three to five weeks). Each group was tasked with completing various forms of paperwork similar to work they would be require to do in their profession. The paperwork was designed to take two to five minutes for each item, and the items were turned in to an assistant when completed so that no one could judge their work compared to others. Each participant was given 60 minutes to complete as many items as possible and was separated into either the high-accountability group, where they were told they needed to achieve a group goal
, or a low-accountability group, where they were told they were to achieve a goal alone. They were also separated into high and low shared responsibility groups.
It was found that, consistent with other studies, highly individualistic people performed more poorly on the task when there was high shared responsibility and low accountability than when there was high accountability. The collectivists, however, performed somewhat better on the task when high shared responsibility was present, regardless of how accountable they were supposed to be as compared to when they were working alone. This evidence shows that collectivist thinking eliminates the social loafing effect, and further evidence done from a similar study showed the effect was related to the collectivist thinking rather than the country, as individualistic Chinese workers did indeed show a social loafing effect.
. This term defines both the dissociation from individual achievement and the decrease of personal accountability, resulting in lower exerted effort for individuals in collaborative environments.
People could simply feel "lost in the crowd," so they feel that their effort would not be rewarded even if they put it forth. This idea can also cause people to feel as though they can simply "hide in the crowd" and avoid the averse effects of not applying themselves.
For example: In 1964, an attack on a woman named Kitty Genovese occurred outside an apartment building as witnessed by 38 of her neighbors. Out of the 38 witnesses, not even one person called the police. Following the incident, psychological research focused on the theory that everyone who was watching simply assumed that someone else would call the police. By thinking that someone else had already or was about to take action, others did not think it was necessary to do anything themselves.
For example: Voting in the United States. Most people say that voting is important, and a good practice for them to do. However, every year a sub-optimal percentage of Americans turn up to vote, especially in presidential elections (only 51% in the 2000 election). One vote may feel very small in a group of millions, so people may not think it is worth it to vote. If too many people think this way, there is a small percentage of voter turnout.
For example, in a workplace environment, the establishment of an absence culture creates an attitude that all employees deserve to have a certain number of days of absence, regardless of whether or not they are actually sick. Therefore, if an employee has not used the maximum number of absence days, "he may feel that he is carrying an unfair share of the workload."
For example, in the Latane et al. clapping and shouting study, people who were alone but told that they were part of a group screaming or clapping could have thought that there was a set level of noise that experimenters were looking for, and so assumed they could work less hard to achieve this level depending on the size of the group.
F-15 fighters accidentally shot down two U.S. Army
Black Hawk helicopters over Northern Iraq
, killing all 26 peacekeepers onboard. The details of the incident
have been analyzed by West Point Professor Scott Snook in his book Friendly Fire.
In his summary of the fallacy of social redundancy, Snook points to social loafing as a contributor to the failure of the AWACS aircraft
team to track the helicopters and prevent the shootdown. Snook asserts that responsibility was "spread so thin by the laws of social impact and confused authority relationships that no one felt compelled to act."
", can create significant productivity increases, both of these behaviors can significantly impact the performance of organizations. Social loafing is a behavior that organizations want to eliminate. Understanding how and why people become social loafers is critical to the effective functioning, competitiveness and effectiveness of an organization.
A 2008 study of 227 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in web-enabled courses at the Naval War College (NWC)
and a public university found that social loafing not only exists, but may also be prevalent in the online learning classroom. Although only 2% of NWC and 8% of public university students self-reported social loafing, 8% of NWC and 77% of public university students indicated the perception of others engaging in social loafing. Additional findings generally verify face-to-face social loafing findings from previous studies. The researchers conclude that injustice in the distribution of rewards increases social loafing, and suggest that self-perceived dominance negatively affects individual participation in group activities.
. A competitive environment may not necessarily get group members motivated.
Thompson stresses that ability and motivation are essential, but insufficient for effective team functioning. A team must also coordinate the skills, efforts, and actions of its members in order to effectively achieve its goal. Thompson's recommendations can be separated into motivation strategies and coordination strategies:
In a 2010 analysis of online communities, Kraut
and Resnick suggest several ways to elicit contributions from users:
An example that the authors study is Wikipedia
, which runs fundraising campaigns that involve tens of thousands of people and raise millions of dollars by employing large banner ads at the top of the page with deadlines, specific amounts of money set as the goal, and lists of contributors.
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
of groups, social loafing is the phenomenon of people exerting less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group
Group (sociology)
In the social sciences a social group can be defined as two or more humans who interact with one another, share similar characteristics and collectively have a sense of unity...
than when they work alone. This is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes less productive than the combined performance of their members working as individuals, but should be distinguished from the coordination problems that groups sometime experience.
Social loafing is also associated with two concepts that are typically used to explain why it occurs: The "free-rider" theory
Free rider problem
In economics, collective bargaining, psychology, and political science, a free rider is someone who consumes a resource without paying for it, or pays less than the full cost. The free rider problem is the question of how to limit free riding...
and the resulting "sucker effect", which is an individual’s reduction in effort in order to avoid pulling the weight of a fellow group member.
Research on social loafing began with rope pulling experiments by Ringelmann, who found that members of a group tended to exert less effort into pulling a rope than did individuals alone. In more recent research, studies involving modern technology, such as online and distributed groups, has also shown clear evidence of social loafing. Many of the causes of social loafing stem from an individual feeling that his or her effort will not matter to the group. Therefore, effective ways to reduce social loafing involve increasing the motivation of individual group members or improving their coordination.
Rope-pulling experiments
The first known research on the social loafing effect began in 1913 with Max RingelmannMax Ringelmann
Maximilien Ringelmann was a French professor of agricultural engineering who discovered the "Ringelmann effect," viz, that when working in groups, individuals slacken....
's study. He found that when he asked a group of men to pull on a rope
Rope
A rope is a length of fibres, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength...
, that they did not pull as hard collectively, as they did when each was pulling alone. This research did not distinguish whether it was the individuals putting in less effort or poor coordination within the group. In 1974, Alan Ingham and colleagues replicated Ringelmann's experiment using two types of groups: 1) Groups with real participants in groups of various sizes (consistent with Ringelmann's setup) or 2) Pseudo-groups with only one real participant. In the pseudo-groups, the researchers' assistants pretended to pull on the rope.
The results showed a decrease in the participant's performance, with groups of participants who all exerted effort suffering the largest declines. Because the pseudo-groups were isolated from coordination effects (since the researchers' confederates did not physically pull the rope), Ingham proved that communication alone did not account for the effort decrease, and that motivational losses were the more likely cause of the performance decline.
Clapping and shouting experiments
In contrast with Ringelmann's first findings, Bibb LatanéBibb Latané
Bibb Latané is a United States social psychologist. He is probably most famous for his work with John Darley on bystander intervention in emergencies, but he has also published many articles on social attraction in animals, social loafing in groups, and the spread of social influence in populations...
et al. replicated previous social loafing findings while demonstrating that the decreased performance of groups was attributable to reduced individual effort, distinct from coordination loss. They showed this by blindfolding male college students while making them wear headphones
Headphones
Headphones are a pair of small loudspeakers, or less commonly a single speaker, held close to a user's ears and connected to a signal source such as an audio amplifier, radio, CD player or portable Media Player. They are also known as stereophones, headsets or, colloquially, cans. The in-ear...
that masked all noise. They then asked them to shout both in actual groups and pseudogroups in which they shouted alone but believed they were shouting with others. When subjects believed one other person was shouting, they shouted 82% as intensely as they did alone, but with five others, their effort decreased to 74%.
Latané et al. concluded that increasing the number of people in a group diminishes the relative social pressure on each person: "If the individual inputs are not identifiable the person may work less hard. Thus if the person is dividing up the work to be performed or the amount of reward he expects to receive, he will work less hard in groups."
Meta-analysis study and the Collective Effort Model (CEM)
In a 1993 meta-analysisMeta-analysis
In statistics, a meta-analysis combines the results of several studies that address a set of related research hypotheses. In its simplest form, this is normally by identification of a common measure of effect size, for which a weighted average might be the output of a meta-analyses. Here the...
by Karau and Williams, they propose the Collective Effort Model (CEM), which is used to generate predictions. The CEM integrates expectancy theories with theories of group-level social comparison and social identity
Social identity
A social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group. As originally formulated by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and 80s, social identity theory introduced the concept of a social identity as a way in which to...
to account for studies that examine individual effort in collective settings. From a psychological state, it proposes that Expectancy multiplied by Instrumentality multiplied by Valence of Outcome produces the resulting Motivational Force.
Karau et al.'s findings conclude that social loafing occurs because there is usually a stronger perceived contingency between individual effort and valued outcomes when working individually. When working collectively, other factors frequently determine performance, and valued outcomes are also divided among all group members. All individuals are assumed to try to maximize the expected utility of their actions. The CEM also acknowledges that some valued outcomes do not depend on performance. For example, exerting strong effort when working on intrinsically meaningful tasks or with highly respected team members may result in self-satisfaction or approval from the group, even if the high effort had little to no impact on tangible performance outcomes.
Notable or novel findings by Karau and Williams following their implementation of the CEM include:
- The magnitude of social loafing is reduced for women and individuals originating from Eastern cultures.
- Individuals are more likely to loaf when their co-workers are expected to perform well.
- Individuals reduce social loafing when working with acquaintances and do not loaf at all when they work in highly valued groups.
Dispersed versus collocated groups
A 2005 study by Laku Chidambaram and Lai Lai Tung based their research model on Latané’s social impact theorySocial impact theory
Social Impact theory was created by Bibb Latané in 1981 and consists of three basic rules. The first rule is that social impact is the result of social forces including the strength of the source of impact, the immediacy of the event, and the number of sources exerting the impact...
, and hypothesized that as group size and dispersion grew, the group’s work would be affected in the following areas: Members will contribute less in both quantity and quality, final group output will be of lower quality, and a group’s output will be affected both by individual factors and contextual factors.
A sample of 240 undergraduate business students were randomly split into forty teams (half of the teams were 4-person and half 8-person), and these teams were randomly assigned to either a collocated or distributed setting. The participants were to complete a task that asked them to act as a board of directors of a winery with an image problem. They were to find and discuss alternatives, and at the end submit their alternative with rationale. Collocated groups worked at a table together, while distributed groups did the same task at separate computers that allowed for electronic, networked communication. The same technology was used by both collocated and distributed groups.
Chidambaram and Tung found that group size matters immensely in a group’s performance. The smaller the group, the more likely each member is to participate, regardless of range (dispersed or collocated). The main difference stated between distributed and collocated groups is the social pressure to at least appear busy that is present in collocated groups. When others are present, people feel the need to look as if they are working hard, while those who are not in the presence of others do not.
Effect of culture
In 1989, Christopher P. Earley hypothesized that social loafing would be mitigated in collectivist cultures that focus more on achievement of the group than the individual. He conducted a study in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, two polar opposites in terms of culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
(with the U.S. being individualistic and China being collectivist), in order to determine if a difference in social loafing was present between the two types of cultures. Earley formed groups from both countries similar in demographics
Demographics
Demographics are the most recent statistical characteristics of a population. These types of data are used widely in sociology , public policy, and marketing. Commonly examined demographics include gender, race, age, disabilities, mobility, home ownership, employment status, and even location...
and in time spent with each other (participants in each of the groups had known each other for three to five weeks). Each group was tasked with completing various forms of paperwork similar to work they would be require to do in their profession. The paperwork was designed to take two to five minutes for each item, and the items were turned in to an assistant when completed so that no one could judge their work compared to others. Each participant was given 60 minutes to complete as many items as possible and was separated into either the high-accountability group, where they were told they needed to achieve a group goal
Goal
A goal is an objective, or a projected computation of affairs, that a person or a system plans or intends to achieve.Goal, GOAL or G.O.A.L may also refer to:Sport...
, or a low-accountability group, where they were told they were to achieve a goal alone. They were also separated into high and low shared responsibility groups.
It was found that, consistent with other studies, highly individualistic people performed more poorly on the task when there was high shared responsibility and low accountability than when there was high accountability. The collectivists, however, performed somewhat better on the task when high shared responsibility was present, regardless of how accountable they were supposed to be as compared to when they were working alone. This evidence shows that collectivist thinking eliminates the social loafing effect, and further evidence done from a similar study showed the effect was related to the collectivist thinking rather than the country, as individualistic Chinese workers did indeed show a social loafing effect.
Diffusion of responsibility/Evaluation potential
As the number of people in the group increase, people tend to feel deindividuationDeindividuation
Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology regarding the loosening of social norms in groups. Sociologists also study the phenomenon of deindividuation, but the level of analysis is somewhat different. For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a...
. This term defines both the dissociation from individual achievement and the decrease of personal accountability, resulting in lower exerted effort for individuals in collaborative environments.
People could simply feel "lost in the crowd," so they feel that their effort would not be rewarded even if they put it forth. This idea can also cause people to feel as though they can simply "hide in the crowd" and avoid the averse effects of not applying themselves.
For example: In 1964, an attack on a woman named Kitty Genovese occurred outside an apartment building as witnessed by 38 of her neighbors. Out of the 38 witnesses, not even one person called the police. Following the incident, psychological research focused on the theory that everyone who was watching simply assumed that someone else would call the police. By thinking that someone else had already or was about to take action, others did not think it was necessary to do anything themselves.
Dispensability of effort
When a group member does not feel that his/her effort is justified in the context of the overall group, the individual will be less willing to assert the effort. If the group size is large, members can feel that their contribution will not be worth much to the overall cause because so many other contributions can or should occur. This leads people to not contribute as much or at all in large groups as they might have in smaller groups.For example: Voting in the United States. Most people say that voting is important, and a good practice for them to do. However, every year a sub-optimal percentage of Americans turn up to vote, especially in presidential elections (only 51% in the 2000 election). One vote may feel very small in a group of millions, so people may not think it is worth it to vote. If too many people think this way, there is a small percentage of voter turnout.
"Sucker" effect/Aversion
People feel that others in the group will leave them to do all work while they take the credit. Because people do not want to feel like the "sucker," so they wait to see how much effort others will put into a group before they put any in. If all the members try to avoid being the sucker, then everyone's effort will be significantly less than it would be if all of them were working as hard as they could.For example, in a workplace environment, the establishment of an absence culture creates an attitude that all employees deserve to have a certain number of days of absence, regardless of whether or not they are actually sick. Therefore, if an employee has not used the maximum number of absence days, "he may feel that he is carrying an unfair share of the workload."
Attribution and equity/Matching of effort
Jackson and Harkins (1985) proposed that if someone feels that others in the group are slacking or that others will slack, he will lower his effort to match that of the others. This can occur whether it is apparent that the others are slacking or if someone simply believes that the group is slacking. For example, in the Latane et al. study above, if a participant heard the others making less noise than anticipated, he could have lowered his effort in an attempt to equal that of the others, rather than aiming for the optimum.Submaximal goal setting
By setting a goal that is based on maximization, people may feel that there is a set level that the group needs to be achieved. Because of this, they feel that they can work less hard for the overall desired effect.For example, in the Latane et al. clapping and shouting study, people who were alone but told that they were part of a group screaming or clapping could have thought that there was a set level of noise that experimenters were looking for, and so assumed they could work less hard to achieve this level depending on the size of the group.
1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident
On April 14, 1994, two U.S. Air ForceUnited States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
F-15 fighters accidentally shot down two U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
Black Hawk helicopters over Northern Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, killing all 26 peacekeepers onboard. The details of the incident
1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident
The 1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident, sometimes referred to as the Black Hawk Incident, was a friendly fire incident over northern Iraq that occurred on April 14, 1994 during Operation Provide Comfort...
have been analyzed by West Point Professor Scott Snook in his book Friendly Fire.
In his summary of the fallacy of social redundancy, Snook points to social loafing as a contributor to the failure of the AWACS aircraft
E-3 Sentry
The Boeing E-3 Sentry is an airborne warning and control system developed by Boeing as the prime contractor. Derived from the Boeing 707, it provides all-weather surveillance, command, control and communications, and is used by the United States Air Force , NATO, Royal Air Force , French Air Force...
team to track the helicopters and prevent the shootdown. Snook asserts that responsibility was "spread so thin by the laws of social impact and confused authority relationships that no one felt compelled to act."
Social loafing and the workplace
According to Hwee Hoon Tan and Min Li Tan, social loafing is an important area of interest in order to understand group work. While the opposite of social loafing, "organizational citizenship behaviorOrganizational citizenship behavior
Organizational Citizenship Behavior has been studied since the late 1970s. Over the past three decades, interest in these behaviors has increased substantially...
", can create significant productivity increases, both of these behaviors can significantly impact the performance of organizations. Social loafing is a behavior that organizations want to eliminate. Understanding how and why people become social loafers is critical to the effective functioning, competitiveness and effectiveness of an organization.
Online communities and groups
Research regarding social loafing online is currently relatively sparse, but is growing.A 2008 study of 227 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in web-enabled courses at the Naval War College (NWC)
Naval War College
The Naval War College is an education and research institution of the United States Navy that specializes in developing ideas for naval warfare and passing them along to officers of the Navy. The college is located on the grounds of Naval Station Newport in Newport, Rhode Island...
and a public university found that social loafing not only exists, but may also be prevalent in the online learning classroom. Although only 2% of NWC and 8% of public university students self-reported social loafing, 8% of NWC and 77% of public university students indicated the perception of others engaging in social loafing. Additional findings generally verify face-to-face social loafing findings from previous studies. The researchers conclude that injustice in the distribution of rewards increases social loafing, and suggest that self-perceived dominance negatively affects individual participation in group activities.
Reducing social loafing
According to Dan J. Rothwell, it takes "the three C's of motivation" to get a group moving: collaboration, content, and choice. Thus, the answer to social loafing may be motivationMotivation
Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
. A competitive environment may not necessarily get group members motivated.
- CollaborationCollaborationCollaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
is a way to get everyone involved in the group by assigning each member special, meaningful tasks. It is a way for the group members to share the knowledge and the tasks to be fulfilled unfailingly. For example, if Sally and Paul were loafing because they were not given specific tasks, then giving Paul the note taker duty and Sally the brainstormingBrainstormingBrainstorming is a group creativity technique by which a group tries to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members...
duty will make them feel essential to the group. Sally and Paul will be less likely to want to let the group down, because they have specific obligations to complete. - Content identifies the importance of the individual's specific tasks within the group. If group members see their role as that involved in completing a worthy task, then they are more likely to fulfill it. For example, Sally may enjoy brainstorming, as she knows that she will bring a lot to the group if she fulfills this obligation. She feels that her obligation will be valued by the group.
- ChoiceChoiceChoice consists of the mental process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options , often a choice is made between real options, and followed by the corresponding action...
gives the group members the opportunity to choose the task they want to fulfill. Assigning roleRoleA role or a social role is a set of connected behaviours, rights and obligations as conceptualised by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behaviour and may have a given individual social status or social position...
s in a group causes complaints and frustration. Allowing group members the freedom to choose their role makes social loafing less significant, and encourages the members to work together as a teamTeamA team comprises a group of people or animals linked in a common purpose. Teams are especially appropriate for conducting tasks that are high in complexity and have many interdependent subtasks.A group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team...
.
Thompson stresses that ability and motivation are essential, but insufficient for effective team functioning. A team must also coordinate the skills, efforts, and actions of its members in order to effectively achieve its goal. Thompson's recommendations can be separated into motivation strategies and coordination strategies:
| Motivation strategies | Coordination strategies |
|---|---|
|
|
Encouraging contributions in online communities
Piezon & Donaldson argue in a 2005 analysis that special attention should be paid to the physical separation, social isolation, and temporal distance associated with distance education courses, which may induce social loafing. In terms of group size, they assert that there is no significant gain in small groups larger than six unless the group is brainstorming, and that the optimal group size may be five members. Suggestions that they have for online groups include clarifying roles and responsibilities, providing performance data for comparison with other groups, and mandating high levels of paricipation consisting of attending group meetings, using the discussion board, and participating in chats.In a 2010 analysis of online communities, Kraut
Robert E. Kraut
Robert E. Kraut is an American social psychologist who studies human-computer interaction, online communities, internet use, group coordination, computers in organizations, and the role of visual elements in interpersonal communication...
and Resnick suggest several ways to elicit contributions from users:
- Simply asking users, either implicitly through selective presentation of tasks or explicitly through requests that play on the principles of persuasion
- Changing the composition or activity of the group
- Using a record-keeping system to reflect member contributions, in addition to awarding privileges or more tangible awards
An example that the authors study is Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, which runs fundraising campaigns that involve tens of thousands of people and raise millions of dollars by employing large banner ads at the top of the page with deadlines, specific amounts of money set as the goal, and lists of contributors.
See also
- Audience effectAudience effectThe audience effect is the impact that a passive audience has on a subject performing a task. It was first formally noted in various psychology studies in the early 20th century...
- Ringelmann effectRingelmann effectThe Ringelmann effect is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases...
- Social facilitationSocial facilitationSocial facilitation is the tendency for people to do better on simple tasks when in the presence of other people. This implies that whenever people are being watched by others, they will do well on things that they are already good at doing...
Further reading
- Jackson, J. M. & Williams, K. D. (1985). Social loafing on difficult tasks. Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyJournal of Personality and Social PsychologyThe Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is a monthly psychology journal of the American Psychological Association. It is considered one of the top journals in the fields of social and personality psychology. Its focus is on empirical research reports; however, specialized theoretical,...
, 49, 937-942. - Rothwell, J, D. In the Company of Others, McGraw-Hill, 2004, ISBN 0-7674-3009-3.
- Rothwell, Dan J., In Mixed Company: Communicating in Small Groups, 3rd. ed., Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Orlando, p. 83.
- "Pattern: Collaboration in Small Groups" by CSCW, The Computing Company, October 31, 2005, retrieved October 31, 2005.