Social Loafing: Why your teammates are slacking off

If you’ve been part of any of these:

• Group projects where members’ biggest contributions are read receipts.
• Lunch meetings where nothing gets finished but the pizza.
• Committees with big member lists and small results.

…your group may be suffering from Social Loafing.

Social Loafing is the idea that laziness gets easier in groups.

Psychologists research and debate the topic to identify its causes. In case you don’t have time to read the literature, we’ve condensed it into a quick rundown of ideas and terms (with GIFs!). If you can spot these, you’re one step closer to de-slothing your team.

The Ringelmann Effect

The bigger the group, the smaller the individual contributions. Max Ringelmann coined this term after his famous social loafing experiment. He instructed groups of people to pull on a rope and individuals in larger teams exerted less effort.

If group members aren’t pulling their weight, you may need to address the horse in the room.

The Sucker Effect

People don’t want to be taken advantage of. If they don’t see teammates working as hard as them, they may reduce their own effort. A prominent “sucker” or team “carry” can also encourage group members to loaf.

An improperly distributed workload can wipe the floor with your team.

Valence of Outcome

How important an outcome is to an individual impacts their commitment to the team. Valence is all about perception: a goal that is very important to one person may be neutral in the mind of another.

Elmo really does want to help, but he needs you to better articulate the objectives.

Instrumentality

Feeling that your work is crucial to achieving a team outcome or that others depend on your performance. Members without instrumental tasks are liable to loaf, or worse, impair the team’s work.

Effort Dispensability

When the entire group works on a task, but their contributions are rendered useless by its completion. Brainstorming is a nefarious example. If one member is likely to come up with the best idea, others may not see the point in offering their own ideas.

Kid in the back raised his hand even though he didn’t have an answer. He knew he wouldn’t be called on.

Evaluation Potential

How well group members contribute depends on how well their performance will be evaluated. Lack of clear responsibilities can make it hard to evaluate individuals. Teammates may also slack off if they find a task where no one can argue that they aren’t pulling their weight.

“Come on, you’re gonna be like this? After all that I’ve… um… yeah.”

If you need to bring up one of these issues with your team, now you have a name for it… and a few GIFs for the group chat.

This article is part of the Group Gurus series. To join our weekly email newsletter and ask student leaders around the country for advice on collaboration and group leadership, email guru@omnipointment.com.

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