Effects of group size and expectancy of reward on social loafing

Abstract

There is a large body of evidence which have shown that monitoring personal effort on group projects reduces social loafing effects, but as the world gets more complex with several co-operative tasks there is a need to explore other variables that would inspire group, rather than individual performance. This experiment re-examined the prediction that performing in large group would lead to social loafing behaviour, the study also tested whether the promise of reward would attenuate social loafing effect on a simple experimental task. Forty (40) Igbo secondary school students of south eastern Nigeria participated in the experiment. They were aged 13 – 16 years (mean age = 14.53). Results indicated that performance was significantly poorer in the group condition than in the alone condition (p. <05); and reward significantly attenuated social loafing effect in the group condition (p. <05). These observations were discussed in relation to the prevailing challenge in team work.