The social loafing effect is quite strong and is likely to occur in many different situations in which people make individual contributions to an additive group task. This exercise is designed to demonstrate the effect firsthand in your own class.

Figure 8.11

Questions for Discussion

1. Was the social loafing effect demonstrated? What is the basis for this conclusion?
2. If the social loafing effect was not found, why do you think this occurred? Do you think it might have been due to the possibility that your familiarity with the effect led you to avoid it? Test this possibility by replicating the exercise using people who do not know about the phenomenon (e.g., another class), and then compare the results.
3. Did members of smaller groups feel more responsible for their group’s performance than members of larger groups?
4. What could have been done to counteract any “free riding” that may have occurred in this demonstration?

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Directions 1. Divide the class into groups of different sizes. Between 5 and 10 people should work alone. In addition, there should be a group of two, a group of three, a group of four, and so on, until all members of the class have been assigned to a group. (If the class is small, assign students to groups of vastly different sizes, such as 2, 7, and 15.) Form the groups by putting people from the same group together at tables. 2. Each person should be given a page or two from a telephone directory and a stack of index cards. Then, have the individuals and the members of each group perform the same additive task-copying entries from the telephone directory onto index cards. Allow exactly 10 minutes for the task to be performed, and encourage everyone to work as hard as they can. 3. After the time is up, count the number of entries copied. 4. For each group, and for all the individuals, compute the average per-person performance by dividing the total number of entries copied by the number of people in the group.