>> Have you ever been
working on a group project
where it feels like
you're doing all the work?
If you're here, you may have
a research paper or
some homework that has to do with
the term social loafing.
But have no worries, because
after watching this video, hopefully,
you'll have a complete understanding
of what social loafing is,
how it works, and
specific measures that you
can actually take to prevent it.
So first off, what is social loafing?
Social loafing occurs when
an individual is doing less when working
in a group as opposed to putting
forth full effort if they were working alone.
Maximilian Ringelman discovered it in
1913 when he noticed group
pulling power in a tug-of-war game
was less than the sum of
the individual's strengths.
In fact, the average contribution decreased
each time more people were
added to the tug-of-war game.
Now this phenomenon suggests members put
in less effort as group size grows.
This thought makes a mockery
of the idea that putting
people in the teams
encourages them to work harder.
Now, this could cause an
entire human resource team
to have palpitations.
This is, however, only half of the truth,
as I'm going to
explain in the rest of this video.
So let's get into some examples real
quick so you can understand it better.
Here's a really quick example.
Tug of war, group homework projects,
an entertainer asking an audience to scream,
are all examples of social loafing.
Because as you add more people to the group,
the total group effort declines.
So tug-of-war is a perfect example because
it's where
Maximilian Ringelman originally found it.
He realized that as you add
more people to a tug-of-war game,
the amount of pressure did not
exactly scale up perfectly.
In fact, the more people you add,
the less each individual worked.
Group homework projects
are another great example.
We've all seen the meme where one student
does all the work and
the others get the grade.
Those who don't work on
the project are considered social loafers.
And have you ever been at
a concert or an event,
or somewhere where the main speaker
asks the audience to
stand up or maybe yell something or clap?
This is a perfect place for
social loafing to happen.
Sometimes the speaker may even
say something like, I wasn't loud enough.
Well, interestingly, the same
thing happens as tug of war.
As you add more people to the group,
they are less likely to
participate in whatever the
speaker is asking them to do.
So after examples, let's get into
the psychology behind social loafing.
What causes it?
Team members begin loafing
socially when they feel that
they're not going to achieve much.
And therefore they conclude that
their participation is optional.
So here are two main reasons that
psychologists have found that
contribute to social loafing.
The first one is a loss of
a sense of individual responsibility.
Ringelman's experiment with a
tug-of-war team showed how
personal responsibility seems to
evaporate according to team size.
Now, the best sports team coaches
achieve incredible results when they hold
their team together and motivate
individual players as well
as the collective team.
It's also really important
for these coaches to know
their team's needs so
that whenever they need space,
they can give them space to
let each player let off steam.
The second thing that
causes social loafing is
reduced belief in the value of contributions.
So if a team member feels
their impact will not be worth much,
especially in a much larger team setting,
they may decide to back off and enjoy
the ride at the expense
of the other people on the team.
Now, this is one of
the main reasons many of us don't
volunteer for projects or
take up leadership positions.
We just don't think that we have much to add.
It's probably also why
half of the American population
stays away from the polls
during presidential elections.
In many cases, the individual that
is loafing may not even realize it.
I also want to mention another common thing
is the division of
an ingroup and outgroup members.
Now, this is common during homework projects,
but I think we can find it
everywhere in the world today.
The third part of this video, I
want to give you some tips on how to
manage social loafing through
a little bit of motivation.
So there are three ways that we can
actually get a group
moving in the right direction.
These strategies are collaboration,
content, and choice.
And it sounds a little interesting,
but this is what
psychologists have come up with.
This plan is a healthy
alternative to encouraging
competition because it seems to
reinforce a collective dynamic.
Now it's important to remember that this
works best during collective practices.
So the first one is collaboration,
and that means each team member
has their own meaningful task.
For example, the worst social loafer
can be allocated to keeping
minutes of meetings and distributing them so
that they don't have
a place to hide, so to say.
The goal here is to get each member
in your group to do something,
and if they don't do it,
hold them responsible.
Secondly, we have content.
And that refers to the importance
of a team member's task
and how well that task
suits their personal attributes.
For example, a person
who likes socially engaging
could be an ideal person
to lead a brainstorming session.
And allocating tasks according to
each person's talent is a great motivator.
It gives each person a time to shine.
Lastly, we have choice.
Choice is equally important because it puts
ownership on the person or
the person making that choice.
Excessive social loafing will be less
desirable to them because
they'll have more important things to do.
Basically, the idea of this third one is
to let each person
decide what they want to do.
So basically, collaboration
is holding everyone accountable.
Content is letting people
do what they do best,
and choice is letting
them choose what they want to do.
So wrapping it up, managing
social loafing attempts to make
a positive contribution to
the soft non-task-related
aspects of group functioning.
Collaboration, content, and choice.
Those things that I went over provide
a great framework for
group leaders to manage it.
I think actually just remembering each of
these can help someone manage social loafing.
However, groups should also
self-optimize from the bottom up,
not be driven from the top.
And what this means is that teams
work much better when
each individual member is
driven to do what they want to do,
how they want to do it, instead of having
one person at the top
telling them what to do.
I hope this short little video
on social loafing helped you
maybe understand why it works
and also how to manage,
especially if you're the one
that's been doing all the work.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
If you have any questions
about social loafing,
feel free to leave them below.
Subscribe if you haven't already,
and I hope to see you in the next video.