Social loafing is a phenomenon of social psychology, a field which scientifically study the human interaction with other human beings in a theoretical and cognitive manner.
Social loafing is the decline in the working effort when performing in a group task as compare to the optimum amount of effort exerted when performing any individual task.
There are two ways in which a person loaf. First is free rider effect which can be define as the “facilitating the lazy one”. To elaborate when a group is packed with members some teammate minimizes their collaboration to achieve the goal by thinking that their effort won’t make any difference for the final result and other fellows will compensate their lack of efforts. Due to this thought process they don’t take their responsibility sincerely and depends on others.
The other factor is sucker effect which explains the effect of social loafing in those people who are performing at expected level and reduced their effort due to the underachieving behavior of other group members. To explain further, when a person is engage in any group task and putting favorable efforts to attain the mutual goal of the group but meanwhile observes other team members who fail to give their best due to social loafing. They begin to reduce their active performance.
The term of social loafing was first generated by Ringleman who was a French agriculture engineer. He observed the effect by assigning two groups a rope pulling task, first group was performing the task individually while second group have to accomplish the same task within a group of participants. He concludes that when a person performs in a group task he/she exert less effort in contrast of a person who is working alone.
Further researches reveal more interesting information about social loafing. In 2005, a research hypothesized that as a group size and dispersion grew the individual performance of members would be affected. In other words increasing number of members in a group, decrease the level of exerting effort of an individual. They purposed that by controlling the group size to be smaller as per the nature of task will contribute to enhance the individual performance.
For putting this information in daily life activities let’s take the example of a 14 year old girl Sally. One day she was engaged in a group activity in her school where she has to draw a big comic character with her three other class fellows. She notice that only her friend Amelie giving her ideas and putting efforts in the activity while other two were just holding pencils and putting less efforts. This situation drops the enthusiasm of Sally. When Amelie notice the decline of Sally’s work. She asked her the reason why she is not drawing like before. To which Sally explain the situation to her and they both decided to ask the other two members of their group if they need some help as they are showing low effort and less interest to which they replied that they merely thought their effort may not make any difference as Sally and Amelie are way too good in drawing. They discuss their query with instructor who notices their social loafing and hence, the instructor decided to divide them into two. One student with Sally and one with Amelie to reduce the quantity of group member and also to equate the level of artistry.
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Until Next time,
Team Doctor ASKY!