Positive Effekte sozialen Faulenzens beim Lösen komplexer Probleme

The term “social loafing” refers to a decrease in motivation and achievement in group work due to sinking responsibility of the individual for the groups’ outcome. Recent studies assume a paradoxical relation between motivation and outcome, which should produce better outcome with decreased motivation. The current study addresses this question. Two experiments with N=60 subjects working in groups of 3 are reported. Subjects had to deal with a computer simulated scenario of a fire fighting situation. There was a simple and a more complex version; also, individual responsibility for the groups’ outcome was either given (coactive condition) or not (collective condition). During experiment 1, subjects could only deal with their own section of the scenario; in experiment 2, they were allowed to work on the whole field. Dependent variables were effort (in terms of commands given) and achievement (in terms of space saved). It turned out that under collective responsibility effort was reduced but this did not lead to decreased achievement. Under the complex condition, with decreased effort even an increase in achievement could be demonstrated. Implications for the collective effort model presented by Karau and Williams are discussed.