>> 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.