托福口语 Task 3

Social loafing is a phenomenon in which individuals exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone. This reduction in motivation occurs because people feel their individual contributions are less identifiable or less critical to the group’s outcome. Social loafing is more likely in large groups, when tasks are simple or repetitive, and when members believe their efforts will not be evaluated. Researchers have studied this effect in various workplace and educational settings, often finding that group performance declines as individual accountability decreases.

Professor: Let me give you a real example from a marketing firm I once consulted for. The company had a team of eight designers responsible for brainstorming new ad slogans. In a group meeting, each designer was asked to shout out ideas, and they produced twenty slogans in an hour. But when I interviewed them individually afterward, they admitted they hadn’t tried hard because they thought others would cover for them. Later, I suggested a change: each designer had to submit three slogans privately, with their name attached. The next week, they submitted forty slogans—double the output. The key difference was that in the group setting, no one could tell who contributed which idea, so they slacked off. But when their names were on their work, they felt responsible and worked much harder. This clearly shows how social loafing reduces effort, and how making contributions identifiable can eliminate it.