Introduction to Groups (Part 2)
The tension in group work
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Groups are valuable: Perform better than the
individuals who comprise them
But they rarely live up to their potential = Process
losses.
Knowledge
Skills
Attitudes
Time
Effort
Potential
Potential
Performance
Performance
What group problems have you had?
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Situations where you thought a group you were part
of didn’t live up to expectations?
Problems in Groups I’ve Supervised in
Industry & Academia
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Every year 1 or 2 groups struggle with problems of group dynamics
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Uneven amount & quality of contributions (social loafing)
Conflict over goals
Conflict over assignments
Conflict over standards
Task conflict spill over into personal conflict
Difficulty dealing with differences between members
Difficulties in coordination
Disappointment with what they have learned
Groups don’t deliver what the client wanted
Social Loafing
“George was a problem in our group, never contributed to any of our group
meetings at all, he would just get his laptop out as soon as he sat down and then
just surfed the web on it. We continually asked him to participate in the work,
close his laptop, etc. but all he did was read website forums on [his hobby] and
edit Wikipedia pages about it.
At best he didn't contribute to the group and ignored us. At worst he would join
the conversation underway and say something that required us to to break what
we were talking about to go back and discuss with him about something that
the group had already decided about 30 minutes ago on.
We purposefully did not let him present to the class because we, as a group,
have no idea what he even really knows about our project and we didn't think
that he would be able to speak about it well.
He contributed nothing to the project.
Not Being Listened To
“As you are (or should) be aware, I have had difficulties dealing with the
group dynamics existing in our project group. I’ve tried several strategies to be
able to cope with them: exposing the problem to you, ignoring these
difficulties and trying to make my point anyway,. …
I’ve also tried to make my voice be heard and to speak up more as you told me
to do, but even this has not worked. … I’m disappointed with myself for not
being more assertive and authoritative and for not knowing how to deal with
this situation better; I am disappointed with you for not being willing to listen
and incorporate my ideas into the group and for not considering me as a real
member of the group.
As a result, I feel that our work so far is not representative of our qualities and
skills. We have been able to produce very little as a group and this is even
more upsetting that the personal feelings I have endured with this group.”
Personality Clashes
A European member from a culture with a very direct way of speaking had a
major role and others were upset and/or intimidated by his direct manner. A lot
of fighting broke out. In this case, a consultant worked with the team and they
learned how to work well enough together to pull together a nice project and the
client was pleased.
Types of Process Losses
Coordination
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Coordination costs of
– Scheduling
– Developing consensus
– Doing the work
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Production blocking: members can
not think of new ideas while
listening to someone else
Common knowledge effect:
discussions focus on shared
information
Unequal participation:
participation  expertise
Motivational
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Social loafing: members expend less
effort when working with others
Conformity pressures: members
feel pressured to agree with the
group rather than share dissenting
information
Conflict: interpersonal conflict is
disruptive
In-group vs. Out-group bias: Mere
group membership leads to in-group
favoritism.
Escalation of commitment: groups
persist in following a course of
action despite evidence against it
Alex Osborne’s
Rules for Brainstorming (1953)
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Work in groups
No criticism
Defer criticism.
Encourage the wild
– Wild ideas may trigger more practical suggestions
from others
– It is easier to tone done crazy ideas than to be creative
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The more the better
– The more ideas, the greater likelihood of one winner
– It is easier to eliminate than to generate
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Build off of others
– Combinations and improvements are welcome
– How can you improve what others offered?
– Can you get creativity from combinations?
Osborne, A. F. (1953). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of
creative problem solving. Charles Scribener’s Sons, New York.
Wikipedia article on brainstorming
Process Loss in Brainstorming
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120
In real, interacting groups
(versus nominal ones)
Fewer ideas
Fewer good ideas
Lower average quality
Lower feasibility
How you attempt to rectify
this depends on why this
occurs
What can cause the
problem?
100
Number of ideas
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80
60
40
20
0
Real group
Nominal group
Number of ”good” ideas produced by interacting
and nominal 4-person groups discussing
how to improve relationships among
Germans & guest workers (Diehl & Stoebe, 1987)
Possible explanations
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Explanation
Conformity pressures
Production blocking
Social loafing
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Solution
Anonymity
Simultaneous input
Surveillance systems
Production Blocking is the main problem
Brainstorm at home & use group meeting to consolidate
Other techniques to enhance brainstorming
• Take a break
• Brainstorm within categories
• Division of labor
Social Loafing
RINGLEMANN’s Discovery (1913)
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A French agricultural engineer who conducted most of
his research in late 1880’s.
Device measured the exact mount of forced exerted
on the rope
1, 2, 3, or 8 people pulling on rope
Force didn’t increase
linearly with the
number of people
Social Loafing: RINGLEMANN
(1913)
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Mean force pulled by
individuals = 85.3 kg of force
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Eight people should produce
(8*85.3kg) or 682.4 kg of force,
but really produce less than
half
` Why?
Nominal or co-acting
groups. Subjects think
they are in the
presence of a group,
but in fact acting alone
motivation
Real (or collective)
groups need to shout at
the same time
coordination
Sound pressure (Dunes per cm2)
Distinguishing Coordination
Problems from Motivation
10
Nominal group
(coactive)
9
8
7
6
5
4
Real group
(collective)
3
1
2
Group size
6
Social Loafing:
Working in a group decreases effort
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Social loafing occurs in
both interacting and
nominal groups
Across many
performance outcomes
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Physical
Intellectual
Quantity
Quality
When is social loafing
reduced?
Brainstorm uses of a knife.
Place ideas into
– Separate boxes (coactive)
– Common box (collective)
Group cohesion
– High Cohesion: Prior pleasant
interaction
– Control: No conversation
– Low Cohesion: Prior
argumentative interaction.
Numberof
ofunique
uniqueideas
ideas
Number
Loafing reduced in cohesive groups
40 Coactive group
Coactive group
35
30
25
20
15
10
Collective group
Low
Social loafing occurs
– In no history control group
– In low cohesion group
– Eliminated in high cohesion
group
Control
High
Cohesion
Karau, S. J., & Hart, J. W. (1998). Group Cohesiveness and Social Loafing: Effects of a Social Interaction Manipulation
on Individual Motivation Within Groups. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2(3), 185-191.
People even work harder in a cohesive group
when they think teammate has low ability
• Subject performs a brainstorming task
• Vary individual vs. collective work
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Individual: Put ideas in separate boxes
Collective: Put ideas in common box
• Vary group cohesion
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Friends vs strangers
• Vary perceived ability of others in groups
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Low: “I’m lousy at this type of task”
High: Irrelevant comments or “I’m generally
good at this type of task”
High cohesion
40
Number of Ideas
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Low cohesion
30
20
10
0
Individual
Collective
Low ability coworker
Individual
High ability coworker
• Social loafing results:
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Collective
With low-ability partners, social loafing occurs in
non-cohesive groups, but reduced in cohesive
groups
With high-ability partners, social compensation
occurs in cohesive groups, but not in noncohesive groups
Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1997). The effects of group cohesiveness
on social loafing and social compensation. Group Dynamics, 1(2), 156-168.
Karau & Williams Meta-Analysis
Meta-Analysis
– Way to systematically combine evidence from many studies by
averaging effect sizes
– Effect size = power of variable of interest in standard deviations
units
Karau & Williams result
– 163 effect sizes
– 123 of 163 studies show evidence of social loafing
• People working harder in coactive conditions than collective
conditions
– Mean effect size = .44 standard deviations (moderate)
Illustrating Average Effect Size
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Difference of .44 standard deviation units btw effort
when individuals are working independently (coacting) versus pooling output (collective)
– Small to moderate effect size
– 66% of people in collective group would exert less effort than averager person in
the co-acting group
– Comparable to difference in height between 14 year old & 17 year old girl or the
difference in reading or math tests of 5th graders vs 4th graders or reading
differences between 12th grade girls vs boys
.44d
Collective
Co-acting
What causes social loafing?
Expectancy-Value Theory (Vroom)
Individuals will work hard in groups to
the extent they believe:
– effort will lead to better performance
– better performance will be recognized
and rewarded
– the rewards are valuable
Utility model of individual motivation
Quasi-economic model
Individuals work hard to the extent that doing so increases
personal payoffs
individual
performance
individual
outcome
individual
effort
x
Valance of
outcome
individual
utility
motivation
You study hard (effort) 
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If you enjoy the topic (intrinsic motivation)
You have a test (individual performance) 
You ace the test (individual outcome) 
You are proud & get praise from parents (evaluation of outcome)
Collective Effort Model (Karau & Williams)
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Being in a group
– Changes probability of outcome
– Changes valence of the outcome
individual
performance
individual
effort
individual
outcome
x
group
performance
Number of others
Own competence
Own unique skills
Group’s incompetence
Valance of
outcome
individual
utility
motivation
group
outcome
Liking for group members
Identification with group
History of interaction with group
Personal importance of goal
Identifiably
Divisibility of outcome
Fairness of reward distribution
Factors that mitigate social loafing
Social loafing reduced if
• Individual's output is visible
• Task is attractive
• Group is attractive
• Expect others to perform poorly
• Own contribution is unique
• Task is simple
• Task has specific, challenging goals
• Among women
• Among people from collectivist cultures
Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical
integration. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 65(4), 681-706.
Scenario
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You are member of a 4-person team to select a Wikipedia
article & improve it to good article status
How do you guard against social loafing?
Ways to reduce social loafing
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Assign fewer people to work on tasks
(“understaffing”)
Assign individual responsibilities
Make individual performance visible
Define clear, stretch goals
Make the tasks intrinsically interesting
Make the group enjoyable to work in
Approaches may differ across cultures
Social loafing experiment - # of “in box tasks” in an hour
US or PRC management trainees
Personal accountability: Individuals signed their work or were
anonymous
Shared responsibility: Told they were in a nominal group of 10 and
given a group goal of 200 items
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PRC
US
Anon
Identified
Anon
26
26
24
24
22
22
20
20
18
18
Identified
16
16
14
14
No Team Goal
Team Goal
No Team Goal
Team Goal
Earley, P. C. (1989). Social loafing and collectivism: A comparison of the United States and the People's
Republic of China. Administrative Science Quarterly, 565-581.