Whether you’re a member of a team, or overseeing a project, your experience of social loafing and how to remedy it will be a little different, so we’ll look at solutions from each perspective.ĭid you ever get stuck with a group of loafers in college, and find yourself madly typing an abstract or bibliography at 4 am, while everyone else binged on pizza and beer? Now that we know about social loafing and what causes it, let’s discuss some ways to reduce this phenomenon in the workplace. A team without a clear sense of goals, objectives, and individual responsibilities flails and produces little at all. A member with high initiative and leadership skills may cause others to dawdle and loaf. If team members see others slacking off, they follow suit. Various group dynamics trigger social loafing. The productivity of a team depends as much on the coordination within the team as on the skill sets of individual members. Have you ever wondered why a football team with the best quarterback and wide receiver in the league never seems to make it past the first round of playoffs? Or why a coach with a seemingly average group of athletes secures a trophy every season?Īccording to Ringelmann, social loafing may be the cause of this apparent inconsistency. one leg in a relay race, the individual feels personally responsible to run at maximum speed. Whereas, when a performance is singled out, e.g. rowers in a boat, they’re less motivated to perform to their potential. When a person doesn’t feel individually responsible to perform a task, e.g. This distinction highlights a key cause of social loafing: motivation and personal responsibility. In The Art of Thinking Clearly, author Rolf Dobelli noted that social loafing exists with rowers, but not in relay races. What causes this dramatic decline in output as group sizes increase? Ringelmann determined social loafing is caused by two main reasons: a loss of motivation, and a loss of coordination within a group as the numbers increase. It’s very real and a part of our everyday life. This discovery of what’s now known as “social loafing”, or “The Ringelmann Effect” has been widely studied and identified in all areas of life: in audiences, for example, people will clap loudly when there’s a small audience, but more softly as the size of the audience grows. What does this discovery mean for you and me? Well, if you’re working with a small company and feel burnt out, then obviously it’s time to move to a bigger team! A group of 8 pulled at only 49%: individual output decreased by more than a half! When three pulled, this output decreased to 85%. When two people pulled together, each person pulled with 93% of the power they exerted when pulling the rope individually. Ringelmann then performed a similar study on humans pulling ropes, and discovered the same pattern. When pulling together, each ox pulled with slightly less power than when they pulled individually. He measured the power of one ox pulling a cart, and of two oxen pulling the cart together. In France in the late 1800s, agricultural professor Max Ringelmann happened upon an insightful discovery. Let’s look at the history of social loafing, break down what causes it, and look at ways both managers and team members can keep it in check. Whether you’re a project manager or working with a team, fortunately there’s a lot you can do to minimize social loafing in your work environment. It reduces the productivity and potential of a group, and creates animosity in the workplace. Johnson points out that as a group size grows, so does the productivity output of each individual. We’ve probably all worked with people who free-ride on the work of others, but the interesting thing about social loafing is that virtually everyone does it to some extent.” In general, the greater the number of people who are working on a group task, the less effort any one member of the group will put forth toward accomplishing the task.
“A phenomenon where people exert less effort when working in groups than they do when working alone. What is social loafing, exactly? University of Washington management professor Michael Johnson defines it as: These are examples of a phenomenon called social loafing. If we’re honest, we do things like this every day. Have you ever shown up to a potluck with a liter of soda and a bag of chips, then helped yourself to a plateful of baby back ribs? Or participated in a book group discussion without having read the book? Tired of Slackers at Work? The Secrets Behind Social Loafing: and What to Do About it