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Social Loafing

David Webb (Owner, writer & host of All-About-Psychology.Com)

work colleagues pulling on a rope taking part in a tug of war in an office

What is Social Loafing?

Social loafing refers to a psychological phenomena whereby the presence of others results in a reduction of individual effort. This can happen because people feel that their individual efforts will be less noticeable in a group, and therefore they will not be held accountable for their performance. As a result, people may be less likely to put in the same level of effort when they are working in a group, leading to a reduction in overall group performance. This can be a problem in various settings, from teams in the workplace to group projects in school.

Contemporary research into social loafing was inspired by Max Ringelmann who suggested that a decrease in performance as a product of increasing group size could be explained by "coordination loss"; defined by Ringelmann as "the lack of simultaneity of their efforts". In a fascinating critique of Ringelmann's work, David Kravitz and Barbara Martin note that Ringelmann's original paper published in 1913 was based on research he actually carried out on human workers between 1882 and 1887, making it arguably, the first social psychology experiment on record. Interestingly though, Kravitz and Martin also point out that as a professor of agricultural engineering, Ringelmann's focus was on maximum performance as a function of the method employed by the worker to push or pull a load horizontally. In essence, therefore, this was primarily research into human factors as the analysis of individual and group performance was only of secondary interest.

Learn More About Social Loafing

Social Loafing: Don’t Be a Sucker or a Free Loader!

Excellent podcast by psychologist Michael Britt who introduces this particular episode as follows: Do you like working in a group? Most people don’t because they’re afraid that they’ll have to do most of the work (wind up being a sucker) and that other group members won’t do their share of the work (free loaders). Want to find out how to avoid this and make your group work productive? Learn how the Agile software development technique can be adapted to your help your next group project be a success.

Related Resources

The Quality of Group And Individual Performance by Irving Lorge

The Quality of Group Performance and Individual Performance

This outstanding paper presents an analysis of studies done in the years 1920-1957 which contrast the quality of performance by individuals and by groups in diverse situations. Group and individual performance is considered in relation to judgment, learning, social facilitation, problem solving, memory and productivity.

This is a must read publication for anybody interested in social psychology, team work, group processes etc. Also psychology students looking for project ideas and or psychology experiments to replicate will find a goldmine of opportunites here. You can access this article via the following link.

Group And Individual Performance

This publication forms part of an initiative designed to make important public domain works in psychology freely available. See following link for more details and to access the full collection.

Psychology Journal Articles

About The Author

David Webb is the owner, writer and host of four websites built around his teaching and research interests; including All-About-Psychology.Com which receives over two million visits a year.

A passionate promoter of psychology through social media, over 890,000 people follow his psychology Facebook page and he is featured on the British Psychological Society list of the 100 most followed psychologists and neuroscientists on Twitter.

A bestselling author, his published work includes: The Psychology Student Guide - The Incredibly Interesting Psychology Book and, On This Day in Psychology.