For most Americans, a job is a social undertaking. On assembly lines and
at construction sites, in offices and around operating tables, many
hands make light work. Yet a team of psychologists has found that
people may work harder when alone. In groups, the researchers say,
Americans become “social loafers.”The team tested a group of Ohio State University students swimming laps,
while others were making noise clapping and shouting. Each noisemaker
let his output drop by half when he switched from solitude to a group
of four. The researchers theorize that workers do poorly in a group
because they know they will not be accountable for individual
performance or suspect that fellow workers are not working
as hard as they. The experimenters believe social loafing could account
for the slowed growth of American labor productivity. Says Drake
Professor Kipling Williams: “What we're finding is that when people
work collectively on a task, they put out less effort than if working
alone.” Williams neglected to mention whether the phenomenon is
observable among teams of psychology professors.
