Group influence

The essentials

Groups influence individual behaviour in many ways. Two important effects are social loafing and group polarisation.

Social loafing is a reduction in individual effort when people work collectively on an additive task (one where the group's output is the sum of individual contributions). In a tug-of-war, for example, each person may pull less hard than when pulling alone.

Key points

Reasons for social loafing:

• Members feel less responsible for the overall task.
• Motivation decreases because contributions will not be evaluated individually.
• Performance of the group is not compared with other groups.
• There is improper coordination among members.
• Belonging to the group is not important for members.

Ways to reduce social loafing:

• Make each person's effort identifiable.
• Increase pressure to work hard by building commitment to successful task performance.
• Increase the apparent importance or value of the task.
• Make people feel their individual contribution is important.
• Strengthen group cohesiveness, which increases motivation for a successful outcome.

Group polarisation is the tendency of groups to make more extreme decisions than individual members would make. Reasons:

• Exposure to new arguments in favour of the shared view strengthens it.
• Seeing others share their view, people feel validated and conform (a bandwagon effect).
• Members identify with the group (ingroup) and adopt its more extreme position.

Exam tips

• Social loafing concerns effort; group polarisation concerns the extremity of decisions.

Common mistakes

• Group polarisation does not mean the group splits into two camps; it means the group's initial leaning becomes stronger.
• Social facilitation (better performance when others watch) is different from social loafing (less effort when working together).