Quiz 5: Social Loafing

Ringelmann 1880 Studies

wanted to optimally coordinate the work of humans and animal, studied men turning a mill crank, noticed the total force did not increase as expected with group size, groups of 3 showed less than 260% increase, groups of 8 showed less than 400% increase compared to 1 person

Steiner 1972, Kravitz & Martin 1986

contributed motivation loss and coordination loss to Ringelmann’s findings

Motivation loss

social loafing, reduction in individual motivation when working in a group

Coordination loss

process loss, performance decrements resulting from difficulties in coordinating group members’ efforts

Tripplet

presence of others as coactors and competitors influences individual motivation and performance

coactors

individuals who are also working on the same task individually

Tripplets Shelter theory

reduced wind resistance when following another rider

Tripplets Brain Worry Theory

greater concentration required in setting the pace or leading a race

Tripplets dynamogenic factors

the presence of another rider is a stimulus to the race in arousing the competitive instinct

Tripplets explanations

shelter theory, brain worry, dynamogenic factors

Robert Zajonc

Drive theory integration, social facilitation

drive theory integration

presence of others enhances the performance of dominant responses, for simple well learned or high trained tasks, dominant responses likely to correct and facilitate performance, but for complex or unfamiliar tasks where effective responses have not been masters, dominant responses result in error

Social facilitation

tendency for the presence of others to enhance performance on simple or well-learned tasks, but reduce it on complex or unfamiliar tasks due to physical presence, concerns over evaluation, distraction, conflict for one’s attention, social monitoring

Ringlemann vs. social facilitation research

ringelmann showed decreases in performance social facilitation showed increases in performance because of differences in makeup of group, observers, coactors, etc.

Ingham

blindfolded participants and led them to believe they were pulling in a group, but they werent- showed social loafing

Williams & Harkins

Coined the term social loafing as a social disease with negative consequences for individuals, social institutions, and societies

Social Loafing

the reduction in motivation and effort when individuals’ work collectively compared with when they work individually or coactively

Collectively

work in real or imagined presence of others with whom they combine their inputs to form a single group product

Coactively

work in real or imagined presence of others but inputs are not combined with inputs of others

Social Impact Theory

Latane, 1981- built on force field analysis of social influence, multiple influence sources intensity the magnitude of social influence, multiple influence targets reduce the magnitude of social influence, when a single influence source requests individuals ina group to work hard on a collective task, the impact of this request is diffused or divided across the group members, diminishing the sources influence and leadind to reduced effort, as group gets larger, diffusion should be reduced, social loafing should be reduced when source status, reputation, or expertise are enhanced and when physical or psychological distance are reduced, declines in source strength or immediacy should strengthen social loafing

force field analysis of social influence

social forces operate on human judgement and behavior within a social structure or social force field, individuals can serve as sources or targets of influence, sources seek to exert their influences on the behavior, motivation, beliefs, or attitudes of targets, the magnitude of influence that sources exert and target experience is a joint function of the strength, immediacy, and number of sources and targets relevant to the influence attempt, strength refers to status, expertise, or reputation of the source, immediacy refers to the physical or psychological distance between sources and targets

Strengths of Social Impact Theory

logical and metaphorical value, mathematical specification of group size hypotheses, recognition of the joint importance of source and target influence characteristics, provides a logical bridge between research on individual motivation in groups with other social influence phenomena

Limitations of Social Impact Theory

criticized for not addressing psychological processes of strength and immediacy in the same detail as it addresses number

Arousal Reduction

Jackson & Williams 1985, drive theory of motivation loss, the presence of others is not always drive inducing, the presence of others should only increase drive when those others serve as sources of social impact (observers, coactors), but should reduce drive when those others serve as cotargets of social influence (coworkers), participants performed better on simple mazes when working coactively rather than collectively, but better on complex mazes when working collectively rather than coactively, reduced motivation could have some performance benefits in complex, novel, unfamiliar tasks because they might make fewer errors because they are exerting less effort

Strengths of Arousal Reduction Model

compelling drive reduction implications, promising implications for future research

Limitations of Arousal Reduction Model

does not ID or explain additional processes that may drive individual motivation in groups, ex. evaluation perspective provides form, nature, type of evaluation effects on motivation

Evaluation Potential

working collectively often makes it difficult or impossible to accurately identify or evaluate the contributions of individual group members, hide in the crowd, lost in the crowd, social loafing can be reduced or eliminated when individuals contributions can be identified by anyone, output must be identifiable, must be a relevant standard to compare output

Strengths of evaluation potential

nicely articulated the dynamics of a variable that likely constitutes an important mediator of social loafing effects

Limitations of evaluation potential

does not explain situations in which social loafing occurs even in the presence of the evaluation of individuals’ inputs to collective tasks

Dispensability of Effort

Kerr et al., 1983, individuals reduce their efforts when working on a collective task because they believe their efforts are partially or completely unnecessary for the group to perform well, individuals reduce their efforts when the collective tasks use disjunctive threshold rule such that if the group succeeds if any group members reach performance criterion, individuals may not work as hard if they feel their efforts are dispensable

Strengths of Dispensability of Effort

highlights the importance of ensuring that individuals have the ability to make useful contributions to the team performance when seeking to reduce or eliminate social loafing

The Collective Effort Model

individuals will only be willing to work hard on a collective task to the degree that they expect their efforts to be useful in leading to outcomes they personally value, perceptions of performance contingencies on the task influence extent to which individuals will view their efforts as leading to valued outcomes, the degree to which strong linkages are perceived between effort and performance and between performance and valued outcomes, people are more likely to be motivated when working on collective tasks that have clear implications for self-evaluation and social identification, the perception is what really matters not the actual outcomes, possibly more of an unconscious thought

Individuals value

objective and subjective outcomes

objective outcomes

pay

subjective outcomes

satisfaction and enjoyment

Strengths of The Collective Effort Model

joining the body of laboratory experimental social loafing studies with broader theories of work motivation, linking across the implications of multiple broad perspectives of clear relevance to individual motivation in groups, articulating additional contingencies between one’s efforts and outcomes that must be considered on collective tasks, providing a detailed analysis of the implications of self evaluation, social comparison, and social identification processes for the specific context motivating individual effort on collective tasks

Reducing Social Loafing

view individual efforts as likely to lead to consequences they personally value, individual effort is important to the group, value is attached to the task or group, individuals expect to make a valuable contribution to the group, people are unique and non redundant, fewer people assigned to their tasks, individual contributions will be acknowledged or included with groups final performance, group is meaningful, cohesive, individual strongly identifies with it, group task has value, outcome has implications for individual self evaluation, obtaining positive outcomes like pride, emotion, growth, connection

social loafing may be particularly pronounced in

boring, highly redundant tasks, with individualistic people working over an extended period of time under fatigue with little acknowledgemetn or reward

Social loafing may be reduced when

members strongly identify with teammates working on an important task for which they can make distinctive contributions well suited for their personal skills

Significant variables Karau & Williams 1993

meaningful tasks, unique tasks, worked with friends or teammates, individually be evaluated on collective task, group performance could be compared to another group, female participants, eastern cultures, field studies

Keys from experimental research

task value, group attributes, evaluation potential, participant attributes or status, consequences of one’s effort, personality

task value

meaningfulness, attractiveness, personal relevance

Group attributes

uniqueness, cohesion, teammate status, social identification, group size, group goal setting, ostracism

evaluation potential

identifiability, accountability, external evaluation, self evaluation, group evaluation, group performance feedback

participant attributes or status

collectivism, gender, fatigue, leadership role

consequences of one’s effort

dispensability, instrumentality, incentives, punishment threats

personality

need for achievement, achievement goal orientation, protestant work ethic, need for cognition, uniqueness self beliefs, affiliation related motives, narcissism

overall social loafing can be eliminated when

task if high in meaningfulness, attractivness, personal relevance, individuals can make unique, non redundant contributions to the group task, working in a cohesive group with familiar teammates or in groups with shared social identifcation, in smaller groups, individuals’ efforts can be identified and evaluated, individuals are otherwise held accountable for their performance, group performance can be evaluated in comparison with either an objective performance standard, ongoing performance levels, or a social standard based on the performance of other relevant groups

fatigue and social loafing

social loafing increased when fatigue is high

perceived loafing levels tend to be lower when

groups or teams are higher in cohesion, group identification or collective efficacy,

Lower perceived loafing associated with these moderators

increases in perceptions of distributed justice, interactional justice, fairness within the group, increases in collective efficacy, group goal difficulty, and goal commitment, motivational climates that emphasize mastery rather than performance, lower levels of apathy and social connectedness, lower levels of role ambiguity or competing family responsibilities, lower levels of defensive impression management, increased levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, perferences for working in a group, LMX not team member exchange, ethical leadership

high levels of perceived loafing associated with

reduced group perforamnce or effectiveness, reduced satisfaction with group members

The Kohler Effect

tendency for individuals to increase efforts when working with a stronger coworker than when working indivdidually, the effort of the weakest group member is crucial, members perforamcne is highest when ability discrepency is moderate because increased efforts by weker members can substantially improve group perforamnce

upward social comparison explanation of Kohler effect

individuals are motivated to perform well on group tasks when working with moderately stronger others because their relative performance provides both informational and normative social comparison information that can be used for goal setting and has clear implications for self evaluation

indispensability explanation of kohler effect

individuals work harder when working with moderately stronger coworkers because the situation enhances the relative value, importance, and indispensability of their efforts to the group outcome

higher effect sizes of kohler effect when

working on conjunctive tasks than additive or coactive, working on physical rather than cognitive , working on conjunctive tasks provided continuous rather than discontinuous feedback, under face to face rather than distributed work conditions

social compensation

tendency for individuals to work harder on a collective task when they expect their teammates to perform poorly and the task or outcome has some meaning or value, participants work harder when working on a meaningful task with a coworker who was expected to perform poorly, more likely to occur and be stronger when low coworker performance expectations are based on ability rather than effort, especially strong social comparison found in low ability low effort condition, increase effort when coworker is expected to perform poorly

sucker effect

individuals may refuse to increase their efforts when working with a partner who repeatedly fails at a disjunctive task in which the team succeeds if either member meets a performance threshold

Competition and motivation

creating competitive conditions between groups can increase motivation, participants worked harder with opposite sex partner, only when partner was higher in ability, individuals worked harder in dyads than individually on divisible conjunctive task with distinct subtasks requiring both members to perform well to succeed

Future directions

ID and test additional moderators and mediators, explore potential positive implications, examine dynamics of social compensation and other understudied motivational gains (hero effect), search form more positive variants of motivation gains in groups

hero effect

individuals show especially high motivation on a collective task when they have the opportunity to make an important, unique, highly visible contribution that is an excellent fit with their own distinctive skills and abilities and can potentially overcome significant challenge or being highly memorable success to the group