Social Loafing in Teams

Developed by Lærke Viuff Petersen

Abstract

One of the roles of a project, program, or portfolio manager is to motivate the project team and make sure they perform at their best and contribute to the work (ISO, 2021). However, this can be challenging due to non-contributing team members, a concept also known as social loafing.

Social loafing is a social psychology theory that describes the loss of individual motivation while working in a group or team, as opposed to working alone. This loss of motivation leads to a reduction in performance and effort exerted by the individual in the team (Rutte, 2008).

This article will introduce the concept of social loafing and the underlying theories that explain the phenomenon and the factors affecting it. Furthermore, the relation to project, program, and portfolio management will be described as well as practical ways of reducing the effect of social loafing. Lastly, limitations of the theory will be explored.

Big Idea

Social Loafing and Motivation

Social loafing is a social psychology theory that describes “the reduction in motivation and effort when individuals work collectively compared with when they work individually or coactively” [1]Social loafing is, thereby, a concept that affects individual motivation, group dynamics, and team performance. [2]

According to the PMBOK guide, people perform better when motivated and are motivated by different factors. They describe motivation as being either intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual, i.e., the feeling of achievement or the feeling of making a difference, while extrinsic motivation is found from an external source, i.e., praise or bonuses. Knowing how to motivate project team members is an important task of the project manager as it can elicit more effective engagement, higher team performance, and thereby better project outcomes. [3]

Social loafing refers to a motivation loss and can be explained by several different theories, described later in the article. The opposite of social loafing is a gain of motivation, referred to as either the Köhler effect or social compensation. These effects describe the tendency to exert more effort into a project, when you expect the teammates to perform moderately better at a task than you, or when you expect them to perform worse than you on what you deem as an important task. [4]

History

The first experiment of social loafing was done in the 1880s by a French agricultural engineer called Max Ringelmann. He conducted a series of experiments where groups of varying sizes were to pull a rope while he measured the total pulling force. He had expected that the total pulling force would increase with the same amount when increasing the number of group members, as the total pulling force would be the sum of the individuals’ performance. However, he found that when the group size increased the newly added pulling force was increasingly less.

This was explained by either a coordination loss by the participants in larger groups or by a motivation loss. In the 1970s these explanations were separated and evidence of motivation loss in groups was found, and thereby the term social loafing was substantiated. Since then, a lot of research and experiments on the topic have been conducted, to find the causes and ways of reducing the phenomenon. [1]

Theories of Social Loafing

The explanation for the concept of social loafing can be found in different social psychology theories. In 1993 Karau and Williams published an article called “Social Loafing: A Meta-Analytical Review and Theoretical Integration” where they analyzed 78 previous studies on social loafing and interpreted them into a model. The study presents different theories that could explain the concept of social loafing as well as the model they created. Five of these theories and the model they created will be summarized in the following section using both the article from Karau and Williams and a chapter in a book written by Karau.

Social Impact Theory

In the social impact theory, people are seen as either a source or a target of social influence, and the amount of social influence depends on the strength, immediacy, and the number of sources and targets present. The number of sources increases the social impact while the number of targets reduces it. By working alone as a target, all the social influence of outside sources is directed at you, however, in a group setting the source of social influence is divided on to the different team members or targets. Therefore, the amount of responsibility experienced by the individuals in a team is less than when working individually. Social loafing will, therefore, be more present in larger groups as opposed to smaller ones. [1]

Arousal Reduction

The arousal reduction theory is an extension of the social impact theory. Again, people can either serve as sources or co-targets of social impact, with the distinguishment between coactive and collective tasks. In a coactive task, individuals work alone in the presence of others that act as a source of influence. In a collective task, individuals work together and serve as co-targets of social impact. The theory argues that when performing a simple task individuals perform better when working coactively, while the opposite is true for complex tasks. [1]

Evaluation Potential

The evaluation potential theory proposes that social loafing is more likely to occur when it is not possible to identify the work of the individual. Working in a team can allow the individual to feel more anonymous and thereby not be made directly responsible for a bad outcome. On the other hand, it also comes with a loss of individual credit, which can lower the motivation of the person. Therefore, a reduction in social loafing can be made by making the individuals’ work in a team identifiable. [1]

Dispensability of Effort

The dispensability of effort theory suggests that individuals may exert less effort when working in teams as they feel that their inputs to the group work are not essential in achieving a high-quality end result, meaning that their work is dispensable. However, this reduction in effort can happen even though the individual's work is identifiable, and it, therefore, contradicts the evaluation potential theory. [1]

Matching of Effort

The matching of effort theory suggests that when working in a team, people tend to match their teammates' efforts. Thereby social loafing occurs when individuals think that others in the group are going to slack. This follows research done about job attitudes, where it was found that individuals’ attitudes and motivation towards a task were highly influenced by their co-workers. [1]

Collective Effort Model

Based on the different theories of social loafing and several studies, a model of individual motivation in groups was created by Karau and Williams called the Collective Effort Model (CEM). It is based on an individual-level expectancy-value model of effort created by Vroom. In the original model, motivation is dependent on three factors, expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. [1]

The CEM is an expansion of this for motivation on collective tasks, where additional contingencies in collective performance have been added as well as implications of different factors of collective settings. Overall, the model suggests that:

“(1) group tasks are at high risk for social loafing because individuals’ outcomes are often less reliant on their own efforts on collective tasks than on coactive tasks, (2) individuals will only work hard when they view their individual efforts as likely to lead to consequences that they personally value, and (3) positive self-evaluation is often an important valued outcome associated with collective tasks”[2]