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 occurs because people feel their contributions are less identifiable or less critical to the overall outcome. Social loafing can reduce group productivity and is often observed in tasks that require collective effort, such as team projects or group assignments. Researchers have identified several factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of social loafing, including task complexity, group size, and the perceived value of individual contributions.

Professor: Let me give you an example from a study I conducted with my students. I asked them to form groups of four to brainstorm ideas for a new campus sustainability initiative. Each group was told to write down as many ideas as possible. What I found was that some students contributed very few ideas, letting others do most of the work. Interestingly, when I later interviewed them, they said they thought their ideas wouldn’t be that important or that others would come up with better ones. To test this, I then had the same students work individually on a similar task. In that condition, they generated twice as many ideas per person on average. So the group setting clearly reduced their motivation to contribute fully.