Social Loafing

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Social Loafing

• February 2, 2006

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Course Lectures Online

• Slides available on my website
• Go to the ILR homepage
• Click on the directory.
• Click on Jack Goncalo
• Click on Teaching
• Syllabus already posted
• Lecture slides posted after each class.

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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.

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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)

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Social Loafing

• BASIC PRINCIPLE
• The larger the number of individuals whose work
  is combined on a group task, the smaller is each
  individuals contribution.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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Increasing Group Size, Increasing Group Output
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But Decreasing Individual Input
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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?

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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?

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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.

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From the individual to the group
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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?