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Category: Effects
Type: A drop in one person’s effort when other people are socially present. In the counted study, men produced less sound pressure when they shouted with others, and they still produced less when they only believed others were shouting. The score is sound pressure, not a meeting, a grade, or a team’s output on a job
Origin: Bibb Latané, Kipling Williams, and Stephen Harkins, “Many Hands Make Light the Work: The Causes and Consequences of Social Loafing,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979, volume 37, number 6, pages 822–832. The PDF was read. Received June 23, 1978. Moede (1927), Ingham, Levinger, Graves, and Peckham (1974), Steiner (1972), Zajonc (1965), Cottrell (1972), Olson (1965), and Latané and Darley (1970) were not opened
Also known as: The PDF does not print a second title. It uses social loafing for reduced individual effort and the Ringelmann effect for the rope shortfall. Free rider is Olson’s term, borrowed for one temptation in the discussion. This page is not the Ringelmann Effect
Quick Answer — Social Loafing, as this page uses the name, is the effort drop in a 1979 shouting study. In the headphone experiment, men who believed one other person was yelling shouted at 82% of their alone intensity. Men who believed five others were yelling shouted at 74%. On those trials only the believer was actually shouting, so the waves could not cancel. Actual groups of six reached 36% of capacity, and that lower figure mixes effort with faulty coordination. The file records sound pressure from undergraduate men. It does not record a class, an office, or a farm.

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What is Social Loafing?

Social Loafing, on this page, is the 1979 name for a decrease in individual effort due to the social presence of other persons, measured as less sound pressure per person when shouting or clapping.
These reduced efforts can be called “social loafing”—a decrease in individual effort due to the social presence of other persons.
Latané, Williams, and Harkins print that sentence while discussing a rope study. The rope total can fall for two reasons. People may pull out of time with one another. Or each person may pull less. They reserve Social Loafing for the second reason. Their own test is noise. A useful picture is one person lifting a sofa he thinks five others are also lifting. In the headphone trials, the other five lifters are a belief. The meter still shows a lighter lift. Groupthink is concurrence pressing a group toward one decision. These men were told to shout. They were not asked to agree on a plan. Group Polarization is a shift in a group’s average opinion. This file has no opinion scale.

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Social Loafing in 3 Depths

  • Beginner: Alone, a shout. Believing one other person is yelling, 82% of that intensity. Believing five others are yelling, 74%. On those trials the meter recorded only him.
  • Practitioner: Keep the belief cell apart from the real chorus. Actual groups of two and six reached 66% and 36% of capacity. The 36% figure still includes waves that miss one another.
  • Advanced: The authors judge two regions on their figure to be about the same size, and from that judgment they call the shouting loss about half coordination and half Social Loafing. An exponent of −.14 fit the pseudogroup results and accounted for 93% of that variance. The fit is not a condition in which each man’s score was posted.

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Origin

Social Loafing is a name coined in this 1979 paper. The authors start from the saying that many hands make light the work, and they read it two ways. Collective action can make a goal easier. It can also mean that people work less hard than they ought to when many hands are available. The rope story, as this paper tells it, is unpublished work by a German psychologist named Ringelmann. Writing in 1979, the authors place that work “over 50 years” earlier. They say he never managed to get it published, and that the results survive as a summary in German by Moede (1927). Moede’s text was not opened. This PDF does not print the year 1913. It says Ringelmann asked German workers to pull as hard as they could, alone or with one, two, or seven other people, and measured the pull with a strain gauge. The paper reports those results as follows. Pulling one at a time, individuals averaged 63 kg. Groups of three exerted 160 kg, only two and a half times the average individual performance. Groups of eight pulled at 248 kg, less than four times the solo rate. Dyads pulled at 93% of the sum of their individual efforts, trios at 85%, and groups of eight at 49%. No kilogram figure for a dyad is printed. The Ringelmann Effect is their name for that shortfall. Social Loafing is the part they want to attribute to reduced effort. They also say Ingham and colleagues tried to separate coordination from effort by blindfolding people who pulled alone while believing others pulled with them. That 1974 paper was not opened. No percentage from it is copied here. Latané, Williams, and Harkins add a doubt: when a person was not pulling, he stood and watched, so a smaller pulling group was a larger audience. Their second experiment holds the audience still for that reason.

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Key Points

Four splits keep a rope total, a real chorus, a believed chorus, and a suggested remedy from becoming one verdict.
1

The name is the effort drop, not the whole shortfall

Social Loafing, in the authors’ sentence, is reduced individual effort from the social presence of other persons. Faulty coordination is a separate loss. In a real group the two are added together. Steiner’s terms, as this paper uses them, call rope pulling and noise maximizing, unitary, and additive: success depends on how much is done, the task is not split into different jobs, and the group result is the sum of the individual efforts. Those books were not opened.
2

Believing others are yelling still lowers the shout

In Experiment 2, people shouted with less intensity in pseudogroups than when alone, F(2, 10) = 37.0, p < .0001. When they believed one other person was yelling, they shouted 82% as intensely as when alone. When they believed five others were yelling, they shouted 74% as intensely. Only one person was actually shouting, so sound waves could not cancel and voices could not miss one another in space or time. The alone average in this experiment was 9.22 dynes/cm².
3

A real group of six is the 36% figure

Actual groups of two shouted at 66% of capacity, and groups of six at 36%, F(2, 10) = 226, p < .001. The paper says the comparable Experiment 1 figures are 71% and 40%. The authors look at Figure 2 and say the region they assign to coordination and the region they assign to Social Loafing are about the same area. From that comparison they conclude that, for shouting, half the loss is incoordination and half is Social Loafing. No area is printed as a measured number. The half is their reading of the drawing.
4

The room's head count did not change with group size

In Experiment 1 the number of people present was always eight: six participants and two experimenters. The authors say social facilitation, as they read Zajonc (1965), and evaluation apprehension, as they read Cottrell (1972), would not predict a group-size effect under that constant audience. Those papers were not opened. Experiment 2 goes further. Blindfolds and headphones meant no one could see or hear any other participant. Only the experimenters could see the performers. The belief that others were shouting still tracked the drop.

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Applications

These four moves follow splits the 1979 paper prints. They are not a claim that a class, an office, a household, or another year copies 74%, 66%, or 36%.

Write the belief cell beside the real group

The 74% figure is a man who thought five others were yelling while he shouted alone. The 36% figure is an actual group of six. In a class project, a work team, or a household chore, ask which of those two arrangements the score came from before the shortfall is called Social Loafing.

Count performers, not bodies in the room

Experiment 1 always had six participants and two experimenters present. The pressure per person still fell as more of them performed together. A sentence that blames “having other people around” has dropped the fact that the audience size did not change.

Name the input the meter can see

The discussion says that if inputs were identifiable and rewards were contingent on them, a free ride would be impossible. These two experiments did not add a condition that posted each man’s score. A meeting that only says “be accountable” has not run the comparison the sentence describes.

Keep the room's loudness off the person

In Experiment 1, one person averaged 84 dB (C) clapping and 87 dB cheering. Groups of six clapped at 91 dB and shouted at 95 dB. The paper says an increment of 6 dB doubles sound pressure. The room got louder. The dynes per person still fell, from about 3.7 alone to about 1.5 in groups of six. A louder room is not each person working harder.

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Case Study

The counted case is Experiment 2, not a collective farm and not a project meeting. The paper is from Ohio State University. Experiment 1 recruited eight groups of six undergraduate men from that university’s introductory psychology classes. Experiment 2 says six groups of six male undergraduate volunteers and does not repeat the campus name. Session dates are not printed. The article was received on June 23, 1978. The volunteers wore blindfolds and headphones. During each trial a constant 90-dB recording of six people shouting played in the earphones, described as a way to reduce auditory feedback and to signal the trial. The room was soundproofed. They were told that people outside would not hear them, that this was not a competition, and that they would not learn their scores until the end. The instructions told them to feel free to shout, and that there was no reason not to do their best. Before the first trial the experimenters asked the group how loud they were supposed to yell. In unison, the group replied, “As loud as we can!” That reply is one choral answer. It is not a private rating from each man. They then went through a series of 13 trials in which each person shouted four times in a group of six, once in a group of two, and once by himself. Interspersed were 12 trials, two for each participant. On those trials everyone else was told that only the focal person should shout, while he was led to believe that either one other person or all six would shout with him. Each person therefore shouted alone, in actual groups of two and six, and in pseudogroups of two and six. A tape counted backward from three, then the 90-dB recording ran for 5 seconds, and a bell ended the trial. The sequence of 25 trials was repeated three times, 75 trials in all. Each subject shouted 24 times. The group, not the person, is the unit of analysis.
When performers believed one other person was yelling, they shouted 82% as intensely as when alone, and when they believed five others to be yelling, they shouted 74% as intensely.
That sentence is the Social Loafing result, because coordination loss cannot operate when only one person is shouting. Actual groups were lower: 66% for two people and 36% for six, against 71% and 40% in Experiment 1. Shouting alone in Experiment 2 averaged 9.22 dynes/cm², against 4.73 dynes/cm² in Experiment 1, t(12) = 4.05, p < .01. The authors offer several reasons for that rise, including the new rationale about reduced sensory feedback, the masking noise, less embarrassment, and the removal of hearing one another. They do not pick one reason with a further test. The lesson inside this file is narrow. When these men believed other men were yelling, sound pressure per person fell even though the other voices were not in the air. When the other voices were real, the shortfall was larger. Bystander Effect is the 1970 book they cite for the idea that pressure is divided among the people present. That book was not opened. No helping rate from it is in this PDF.

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Boundaries and Failure Modes

Social Loafing, as this PDF lets us count it, is two noise experiments with undergraduate men. Experiment 1 used eight groups of six from one university’s introductory class, seated 1 meter apart, with the meter 4 meters away, clapping or cheering for 5 seconds. The per-person averages there are about 3.7 dynes/cm² alone, 2.6 in pairs, 1.8 in foursomes, and about 1.5 in groups of six, F(3, 21) = 41.5, p < .001, which is 71%, 51%, and 40% of the sum of individual capacity. Experiment 2 used six groups of six volunteers. Two uses overshoot the paper. One exports 74%, 82%, 66%, 36%, 9.22, or 4.73 onto a class, an office, a household, or another year. The other treats 36% as pure Social Loafing. The half-and-half sentence is easy to over-read. It comes from judging two areas on Figure 2 to be about the same. It is not a second F test, and it is not a percentage with a standard error. The tested Social Loafing contrast is F(2, 10) = 37.0 on the pseudogroups. The tested actual-group contrast is F(2, 10) = 226. A power function with an exponent of −.14 accounted for 93% of the variance for the pseudogroups of Experiment 2. The authors say that fit cannot be checked on the actual groups, because coordination loss is mixed in. The discussion’s remedy is a suggestion. If individual inputs were identifiable and rewards depended on them, they say, performers could not take a free ride and would have an incentive to work equally hard in groups of different sizes. No cell in this PDF posts a score and then measures the change. Overjustification Effect is a different claim, about a reward changing interest in a task. This file has no interest score. Illusion of Control is a belief that one controls a chance outcome. The authors cite Seligman (1975) for the idea that people grow less enthusiastic when they cannot control outcomes. That book was not opened. No control rating was collected here. The sample is men. The paper does not report a woman’s session. The task is loud noise on cue, which they call a maximizing task. A precision job, a vote, or a conversation is not this score. The closing pages cite collective farms and kibbutzim from other books. Those books were not opened. No acre, dollar, or milk yield from them is on this page.

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Common Misconceptions

Three readings turn a rope total, a blocked ear, or a suggested remedy into a different study.
The 1979 paper uses the Ringelmann effect for the rope result it reports from Moede: 63 kg alone, 160 kg for three, 248 kg for eight, and 93%, 85%, and 49% of summed individual effort. It uses Social Loafing for reduced effort. Actual groups of six, at 36% of capacity, still mix that effort drop with coordination loss. The 74% figure is the cell in which the other shouters were a belief.
Experiment 2 blocked sight and hearing among the participants. A 90-dB recording masked the shouts. The drop remained: 82% when one other person was believed to be yelling, and 74% when five others were. The authors say the equity story, that a man hears his partners slacking and matches them, cannot explain this experiment, because he could not judge their loudness or his own.
The discussion suggests that identifiable inputs and contingent rewards would remove the free ride. The experiments did not add that condition. The unison line “As loud as we can!” is the group’s answer to a question asked before the first trial. It is not a finding that every man privately aimed at the maximum on every shout. The farm and kibbutz paragraphs are citations. They are not this sample.
These six pages sit beside Social Loafing. Each one asks a different question.

Ringelmann Effect

The name this paper uses for the rope shortfall. Social Loafing is the effort portion the headphone trials separate from coordination loss.

Bystander Effect

The 1970 book is their analogy for pressure divided among the people present. No helping count from that book is in this PDF.

Groupthink

Concurrence pressing a group toward one decision. These instructions asked for noise, not for a shared plan.

Group Polarization

A shift in a group’s average opinion after discussion. This file scores dynes per person, not an opinion.

Illusion of Control

A belief that one controls a chance outcome. The authors suggest a loss of control over credit. They did not collect a control rating.

Overjustification Effect

A reward that changes interest in the task itself. The suggested remedy here is pay tied to an identifiable input. No interest score is in this PDF.

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One-Line Takeaway

Before a shared task is called Social Loafing, write whether the others were actually working, and set 74% beside 36% so the belief cell is not replaced by the real group of six.