Factors that have been found to decrease social loafing include high levels of social cohesion, task difficulty, task uniqueness, and identifiability. Karau and Williams (1997) looked at the effect of social loafing and social cohesion by having people work in groups on an idea-generation task either as strangers or as friends. They found a high level of social cohesion among friends, and people were less likely to social loaf when working together. This experiment supports the hypothesis that high social cohesion decreases the social loafing effect.

Harkins and Petty (1982) found that as tasks become more difficult and participants perceive they can make a unique contribution to the task, social loafing decreases. They had participants do a brainstorming task in which they had to generate uses for an object. The object was either determined to be difficult to generate uses for or easy to generate uses for. Participants in the difficult object-group condition generated more uses for the object and the uses were judged to be more unique. This finding implied that social loafing occurs when people feel that the task is boring or mundane and that their contribution to the group is not unique.

Most social loafing research has found a common thread for why social loafing may occur: identifiability. Lack of identifiability may be one of the largest contributing factors to social loafing. The theory of identifiability states that when an individual’s performance is combined with others so that their contribution is unknown, they will expend less effort. However, when their contribution is identifiable, the social loafing effect decreases substantially (Bartis et al. 1988; Harkins and Jackson 1985; Harkins and Szymanski 1989; Szymanski and Harkins 1987, 1993; Weldon and Gargano 1988; Williams et al. 1981).

This study examines the role of punishment threats on decreasing social loafing. A theory proposed by Williams and Karau (1991) called social compensation could explain why punishment may decrease social loafing. Social compensation suggests that, under some circumstances, a person may work harder in a group because they fear others in the group are performing below standard. This could be used to predict punishment effects on social loafing, due to the fact that the individual fears that he or she may be punished for the less than adequate performance of others in his or her group.

The literature on punishment threats on social loafing is very slim — only two studies have looked at this relationship. Miles and Greenberg (1993) examined punishment and social loafing among high school swimmers. Researchers had members of high school swim teams swim a 100-yard freestyle race as either an individual swimmer or as a member of a four-person relay team. A difficult but feasible time goal was set for both the individual and the relay team. The punishment variable was a threat of having to do laps after the timed trial that were either severe, moderate, or not a threat. In the no-threat conditions, individual swimmers swam faster than swimmers in the relay. However, when the threat of punishment was introduced, there was no significant difference between individual swimmers and team swimmers. An interesting interaction occurred in this study: Swimmers in the individual-severe punishment condition swam slower than all of the other conditions, except for the group-no punishment condition. The authors concluded that the punishment threats may have been a challenge to the swimmers’ freedom to perform at a relaxed level; therefore, in a way of re-establishing their freedom, they swam at a pace that was denied to them. Overall, they concluded that threats of punishment attenuate the social loafing effect.

George (1995) studied social loafing among salespeople with punishment and reward by a supervisor. Punishment and reward were administered by a supervisor at a major retailer as a way of decreasing social loafing among salespeople. Salespeople worked in groups of four to 10 people, and a group was operationally defined as people who worked together, shared responsibilities, and worked for the same goal. The study was conducted using a mail survey in which the researcher asked participants to measure the extent to which their supervisor engaged in contingent reward behavior, non-contingent reward behavior, contingent punishment behavior, and non-contingent punishment behavior. Social loafing was measured by a scale developed by George (1995) and given to the participants’ supervisors, which they used to rate the extent to which their employees engaged in social loafing behavior. The author hypothesized that contingent reward and punishments would decrease social loafing, while non-contingent rewards and punishments would have no effect on it. He found that, while contingent rewards were negatively correlated with social loafing, contingent punishment seemed to have no relationship to social loafing. Non-contingent rewards were not associated with social loafing, while non-contingent punishment was found to be positively correlated with the phenomenon.

There were various problems with these two studies. The 1993 Miles and Greenberg study looked at punishment threats and social loafing in a natural environment where participants knew their group members. The George (1995) study also looked at punishment and social loafing, but was only able to base the findings on correlational evidence. In short, the research methods which the two studies employed, may have led to unreliable results. Here, we attempt to replicate the findings of Miles and Greenberg (1993) while using methods similar to previous researchers such as Petty et al. (1977), Latane et al. (1979), Harkins et al. (1980), Harkins and Petty (1982), Williams and Karau (1991), Harkins (1987), and Bartis et al. (1988). We hoped to achieve control by holding conditions constant, and eliminating potential confounding variables as much as possible. These practices were not done in the other two studies looking at punishment threats on the social loafing effect.

We tested punishment threats on social loafing by placing participants in conditions where they were asked to complete a cognitive task either under the assumption that they were performing the task as an individual or that their work on their task would be a cumulative effort with two other people. The other variable we examined was the effect of a threat of punishment: participants were either told that if they do not perform at a specified standard, they would be held back to run the experiment until they have reached the predetermined goal, or they were not threatened with punishment. We predicted that participants in the group-punishment condition would perform significantly better than participants in the no punishment-group condition.

Participants were given an envelope with a piece of paper with an object written on it. The object used in this experiment was a knife, which we chose for replication purposes (i.e., other experiments in this topic used the same object). Inside the envelope were 50 pieces of paper for the participants to write their uses for the knife on. Participants were instructed by thorough written and verbal instructions to write a use on a piece of paper, fold the piece of paper two times, and place the paper in a box. During the experiment, the participants were seated at a table with a partition to separate them from other participants. During the time that participants were given to generate uses for the knife, they were given headphones through which played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as way of preventing them from hearing other participants.

Questionnaire

Two questionnaires were used in the experiment: one for the group conditions and another for the individual conditions. Both questionnaires used a 10-point Likert scale (Appendix A ), which we chose because of its usage in similar experiments. Participants in the individual conditions were asked three questions, two of which measured the amount of effort they believe they exerted on the task, and the other measured the importance of reaching the set goal. Participants in the group conditions were asked the same questions, plus four other questions asking to approximate the amount of effort expended by the other group members. These questions were intended to measure social compensation.

Procedure

Participants met the researchers in a small room at a scheduled time and day. The participant was assigned to one of the four conditions. The four conditions of the study were individual-punishment, individual-no punishment, group-punishment, and group-no punishment. The participants were then given a consent form (Appendix B), which they signed if they agreed to continue on with the study. The consent form also gave a brief overview of the study. If consent was given, participants were given written and verbal instructions on how to continue with the study (Appendix C ). In the group conditions, after being seated at the table, confederates or other participants arrived and sat down next to the participant/participants. We employed the use of one or two confederates, which was any combination of one or two of six Mills undergraduate students selected, who were not part of the psychology department. In the individual conditions, confederates were not used. Once everyone was seated, the researcher handed each person an envelope with a slip of paper clipped to it with the word “knife” written on it. All participants were given a goal for the amount of uses they were to generate for the knife. The goal was 34 uses for the object. This goal was determined based on the findings of Williams and Karau (1991). In their study, the average number of goals generated was 25.48 (SD=9.19) in the medium trust co-active condition. We decided to take the average plus one standard deviation as our goal, which was how we arrived at 34 uses as the goal.

In order to manipulate the punishment conditions, participants in the individual-punishment condition were told that if they did not reach the goal, we would be unable to use the data and they would have to stay and run the experiment again with a different object. Participants in the group-punishment condition were told the same, but that their uses would be combined with the other group members and that, as a group, they were to reach the goal of 34 uses.

The participants were told to generate as many uses for the knife as possible in a 12-minute span of time. Twelve minutes had been found to be a sufficient amount of time to generate uses for an object in previous research by Harkins and Petty (1982). After the 12 minutes were up, the music stopped as a signal for the participants to stop writing. The researchers then gathered the slips of paper from the participants and the confederates and placed them in a large box. This was done so that the participants thought their uses would not be individually identified, due to the fact that identifiability has been found to decrease social loafing (Williams et al. 1981; Harkins and Jackson 1985; Bartis, Szymansky, and Harkins 1988; Weldon and Gargano 1988; Harkins and Szymansky; 1989). Social loafing was measured by the number of uses each participant generated.

After the brainstorming portion of the experiment was over, participants were given a questionnaire to fill out. When the questionnaire was completed, the participants were debriefed and told the hypothesis of the experiment. They were also asked to not disclose information about the experiment to other individuals. Lastly, the participants were asked if they would like to receive information about the results and findings of the research, thanked for their participation, and allowed to leave.

A 2x2 analysis of variance’s (ANOVA) was conducted with group size (1 vs. 3) and punishment (no punishment vs. punishment) as the independent variables of interest and number of items generated as the dependent variable.

Table 1 . Mean Number of Ideas Generated* *As a function of punishment threats and group size

Table 2. Mean Effort Placed on Task*† *As a function of punishment threats and group size †Effort was measured on a 10-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree that I applied all of my effort to the task, 10 = strongly agree that I applied all of my effort to the task)

Table 3. Mean Effort Placed on Task*† *As a function of punishment threats and group size †Effort was measured on a 10-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree that I applied all of my effort to the task, 10 = strongly agree that I applied all of my effort to the task)

Table 4. Mean Importance Placed on Task*† *As a function of punishment threats and group size †Importance was measured on a 10-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree that it was important to reach the goal, 10 = strongly agree that it was important to reach the goal)

Table 5. Mean Questionnaire Response*† *Responses given by participants in group conditions, as a function of punishment 1Participants were asked, “How much effort do you think your fellow group members exerted on the task?” and rated responses on a 10-point Likert scale (1 = no effort, 10 = all of their effort) 2Participants were asked, “When working as a member of this group, did you feel that you worked harder than the other group members?” and rated responses on a 10-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 10 = strongly agree) 3Participants were asked, “Did you feel that the other group members worked or put as much effort into the task as you?” and rated responses on a 10-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 10 = strongly agree) 4Participants were asked to estimate the average number of uses the other group members generated; this was an open-ended question. †None of the responses was significant (p?0.05) using an Independent Sample t-test

With past research in mind, the present experiment was both consistent and inconsistent. For example, Miles and Greenberg (1993) concluded that punishment threats attenuated social loafing, whereas we found they did not. However, both the present study and theirs did find increased productivity, of sorts. George’s (1995) study found that non-contingent punishment was positively correlated with the social loafing, which did not correspond with the current study’s findings.

One of the present experiment’s obstacles may have been the goal. It is possible that participants found the goal distracting. That is, participants in the group conditions may have used it simply as a way to assess themselves, and not their group. Therefore conducting research of this nature without a goal may have been ideal. This may also serve as an explanation as to why no significant results for the questions posed to those in the group conditions were found.

Another possible problem in our experiment may be group size, as the present study only used three. Maybe if the groups were larger, different outcomes would have emerged from the experiment as well. Lastly, the pool of participants itself could have altered out results, as the pool was mainly women. This is an interesting, but largely unexplored problem. Perhaps future research will offer some interesting insight into this subject matter.

Nevertheless, the fact that the hypothesis was not supported may have been the most important finding of our experiment. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that threats of punishment would decrease the social loafing effect. In other words, participants in the group-punishment condition were to perform significantly better, measured by the number of ideas generated, as opposed to those in the group-no punishment condition. We also expected to find the classic social loafing theory replicated, where participants in the individual-no punishment condition generated more ideas than the participants in the group-no punishment condition. The fact that social loafing prevailed even under threats of punishment, speaks volumes about the strength of the phenomenon. On a somewhat related note, though social loafing continued to manifest through the threats, practical applications were still derived from our experiment. Knowing that social loafing flourishes in the classroom and the workplace, even under threats of punishment, suggests that punishment as a disciplinary measure to decrease social loafing may not be as effective as thought previously, even though it motivates people to be more productive.

There is no doubt that the future will bring about more studies on social loafing, as our experiment and other psychological research on social loafing exhibit the fact that social loafing can be lessened and even eliminated. Some interesting ideas for psychological research on social loafing include rewards and social loafing, as rewards seem like a possible way to decrease social loafing and increase productivity simultaneously, and social loafing and social hierarchy, as higher roles seem like they may be a deterrent to loafing behavior (in the workplace, especially.)

Despite the restrictions of the present experiment, it was successful in bringing light to various other aspects of social loafing and using punishment as a potentially powerful tool in motivating and managing people.

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