Performance among Individuals and Groups: The Implications of Parallel Research Traditions for Social Loafing

Abstract

Research on social loafing began with a simple question: Why are individual effort and productivity less when people work in groups compared with when they work individually? That is, a common consequence of collective effort tasks is that the combined effort of group members falls short of the sum of the efforts of an equivalent number of people working individually. Although nonpsychological factors such as poor coordination of efforts (Kravitz & Martin, 1986) may account for some of the decline in effort productivity, the decline persists even when poor coordination of effort is eliminated. Indeed, one of the most striking findings from the social loafing literature is that the mere belief that individual efforts will be combined to produce a group product can lead to lower productivity. Chapter 1 places the phenomenon squarely within an expectancy-value framework. Accordingly, people will work provided three conditions hold. First, they must perceive a relationship between their efforts and their performance (e.g., high effort will lead to a good performance). Second, they must perceive a relationship between performance and the outcome (e.g., a good performance will be rewarded). Third, they must value the outcome such that the value must exceed the costs associated with contributing.