Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. In the social
psychology of groups, social loafing is the phenomenon of people making
less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they
work alone. This is seen as one of the main reasons groups are sometimes
less productive than the combined performance of their members working
as individuals.Research began in 1913 with Max Ringelmann's study. He
found that when he asked a group of men to pull on a rope, that they did
not pull as hard, or put as much effort into the activity, as they did
when they were pulling alone. The main reason is that the social loafer
or "free-rider" believes that their personal work is not being
evaluated.According to Bibb Latané et al., "if a person is the target of
social forces, increasing the number of other persons diminishes the
relative social pressure on each person. If the individual inputs are
not identifiable the person may work less hard.
