Social loafing describes the tendency of individuals to put forth less effort when they are part of a group.
Here we discuss how researchers have studied social loafing and what we’ve learned from thesepsychology experiments.
Here’s an example to consider.
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Imagine that you’re a student.
You’re responsible for the entire assignment, so you begin taking the actions necessary to complete it.
He found that when part of a group, people made less of an effort than when working individually.
Researchers found that groups containing all real participants experienced the largest declines in performance.
This suggested that the losses were linked tomotivational factorsrather than group coordination problems.
In this study, half of the groups consisted of four people while the other half consisted of eight.
Researchers found that people extended greater individual effort when they were in smaller groups.
Why does social loafing occur?
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2016;55(A):268-277. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.009
