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social dynamics
You work less when you are in a group.
Latané, Williams, and Harkins (1979) demonstrated social loafing by measuring tasks like shouting and clapping to isolate motivational loss from coordination loss.
The rope-pulling experiment is associated with the earlier Ringelmann effect (1913), which confounded physical coordination issues with motivational decline.
Collaboration often masks a quiet, individual decline in personal accountability.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Latane, Williams, and Harkins, 1979
- What the check found
- The definition and the 1979 source are accurate, but the example of rope-pulling specifically belongs to the Ringelmann effect (1913), not the study that coined and empirically isolated 'social loafing'.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.