Individuals have to combine their efforts in order to be successful in a collective task. A significant number of tasks in modern professional settings are carried out through group collaboration, as indicated by research in organizational behavior.. Social loafing can be defined as the tendency of individuals to make less effort when they work together than when they work individually . Especially in business environments where group work is common, it is inevitable that the phenomenon of social loafing negatively affects productivity at work . As it is generally accepted, social loafing, also known as demotivation, is the decrease in individual effort observed when people work in groups compared to when they work alone.
History
French agricultural researcher (agronomist) Maximilien RINGELMANN conducted an experiment in groups at the Grand Jouan Agricultural College in 1883.
The rope pulling experiment carried out in 1883 gave an interesting result. The greater the number of people pulling the rope, the less force each pulling person exerted, dropping to 50 per cent in 8 people! Although it had been known for a long time, Ringelmann was the first to prove this thesis scientifically.Individuals may exhibit reduced performance in group settings, particularly when they perceive that their individual contributions are not being monitored.
Scope
Ringelmann's experiment consisted of twenty students, alone and in groups, pulling a five metre length of rope and placing a dynamometer (force gauge) at the other end of the rope.
When two people pulled on the end of the rope, the average force exerted by two subjects was equal to 93 per cent of that exerted alone. With three people, this dropped to 85 per cent, and with four people to 77 per cent. And so the ring of laziness continued until each person in the group of eight was exerting only half of his or her capacity. Psychologists today call this effect the Ringelmann Effect.
Ringelmann concluded that groups cannot reach the expected efficiency because interpersonal processes in groups reduce the overall competence of the group.
Causes
Ringelmann identified two possible reasons for the decline in the productivity of groups: Loss of motivation and coordination problems.
Loss of Motivation
According to Ringelmann, group members tend to rely on co-workers or other members to provide the effort required for a common task. Although group members often believe that they are contributing to their maximum potential when asked, empirical findings have shown that members exhibit loafing even if they are not aware of it. In order to reduce the level of social loafing in a group, various solutions categorised as social facilitation have emerged in the literature. Some of these solutions can be summarised as increasing identifiability, reducing loafing, setting goals and increasing participation.
Increasing Identifiability
When people feel that their individual ideas or activities are identifiable (e.g. they are being evaluated), they are motivated to put more effort into a group task. This is because people are concerned about being evaluated by others (evaluation anxiety) when a task is simple and individualised. This increases productivity through social facilitation. Likewise, if a task allows group members to be anonymous, they feel less pressure to be evaluated by others. This leads to social loafing and reduced productivity in the group task.
Reducing Shirking
This is a condition that has been recognised in psychology as “social loafing”. In fact, it occurs when people say to themselves the sentence ‘others are doing it anyway, why do I need to do it?’. Based on Ringelmann's findings, people think that the effort they spend while working in a group will be overlooked. For this reason, instead of performing fully, they do their part ‘on their own’. In other words, there is no point in performing if individual performance will not be seen and/or recognised when working in a group!
To prove this, the researchers asked people to make the loudest sound by clapping alone and in a group. As you might expect, they were able to make more noise when they were alone, but did not feel the need to perform as loudly when they were in a group. In one condition of the experiment, participants were informed that their individual clapping volume would be measured, which resulted in performance levels comparable to individual efforts.. Those who thought that their individual performance would be measured even if they worked in a group performed as well as when clapping alone, and no decrease was observed.
Social loafing individuals typically do not contribute to the group because they believe that others will compensate for their shortcomings. Therefore, individual group members should be made to feel that they are an indispensable part of the group. In this way, by increasing the perceived importance of personal roles within the group, individuals tend to work harder to achieve group goals. A similar effect can be achieved by reducing the size of the group. As the group size decreases, each individual's role in the group becomes increasingly salient and there is less opportunity for social loafing.
Setting Goals
Groups that set clear and explicit goals tend to perform better than groups that lose sight of their goals. It is believed that setting clear goals encourages a number of production-enhancing processes, such as increased commitment to the group, comprehensive planning of group work and monitoring of its quality, and greater effort. A similar effect can be achieved by reducing the size of the group, because as the group size decreases, the role of each member in the group becomes increasingly active, so there is less opportunity for social loafing. It is also important that group goals are challenging. This is because easy tasks do not require the group to complete them and thus offer members the opportunity to loaf, whereas achieving challenging goals requires the full co-operation of all group members.
Increasing Involvement
Another method to reduce social loafing is the extent to which group members are interested in the task or goal set. This can be done by turning the task into a friendly competition between group members or by adding rewards or penalties to the task depending on the performance of the group as a whole.
Loss of Co-Ordination
When individuals come together in groups to perform a task, their performance depends on their individual skills and abilities and on interpersonal co-ordination within the group. Even if group members individually have sufficient skills and expertise to perform a task, they may not be able to coordinate their efforts efficiently. In reality, if team members cannot effectively synchronise their actions during the game, the overall performance of the team is likely to be poor. Coordination problems within the group are a function of the tasks to be performed. If a task cannot be broken down into individual subtasks and requires a high degree of contribution and interdependence among members to be successful, the potential performance of the group depends on their ability to coordinate with each other.
In addition, research has shown that participants with previous experience in a team sport may not show the Ringelmann effect.
