The One About Me, Clapping, and Social Loafing

Slacking off is a common occurrence. Even in this fine, liberal arts, private university, people slack. Group projects, in my opinion, are one of the situations that commonly lead to slacking. Another, more psychological, term for slacking in groups is Social Loafing, which is the reduction in individual performance on easy tasks that is produced when in a group and where contributions are pooled (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). In other words, when people are working in groups, and don’t believe their individual contributions can be calculated, they tend to slack and not work as hard as they would have had they been working alone.

The concept of Social Loafing is something I am very experienced with. For instance, I’ll admit that I have a tendency to slack off with group projects, unless at the end of the project we all individually rate each other in terms of our contribution to the project. In that case my individual effort can be calculated, so therefore I will almost never slack off. Interestingly, when I do slack off, my main reason behind is that I don’t want to put forth a lot of effort and end up doing all the work. This train of thought is sometimes called the Sucker Effect (Houldsworth & Mathews, 2000; Kerr, 1983; Shepperd, 1993). In other words, no one wants to be the hardworking 'sucker', so this effect is likely to lead to poor group performance if everyone has the same thought of not wanting to be the one to do all the work, thus withholding their efforts.

Social Loafing affects more than just effort in a group project, but also effort in clapping. That is, people tend to exert less effort and clap less loudly when they are in groups compared to when they are alone (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). This is something I experienced just before writing this blog. I was attending an on campus event, How to Build a Fire, in which multiple people perform skits, read poetry, etc. It was amazing, but I noticed the people around me, and myself, weren’t clapping very loudly nor very vigorously, though I knew many of us were enjoying the performance. Thanks to my knowledge of Social Psychology and the concept of Social Loafing, I realized what was going on. After that point I tried to put forth more effort into my clapping and combat Social Loafing, at least for myself. I don’t know if I caused anyone around me to clap just a little bit louder, but at least I know I put my full effort into something, even if it was just clapping.

Houldsworth, C., & Mathews, B.P. (2000). Group composition, performance and educational attainment. Education and Training, 42, 40-53.

Kerr, N.L. (1983). Motivation losses in small groups: A social dilemma analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 819-828.

Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 822-832.

Shepperd, J.A. (1993). Productivity loss in performance groups: A motivation analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 67-81.