Social Loafing and Motivation Gains in Groups: An Integrative Review

Working with others on group or collective tasks often leads individuals to slack off and reduce their own efforts, but such motivation losses are not inevitable, and motivation gains can even occur under certain circumstances. In this chapter, we provide a detailed, integrative review of research and theory on individual motivation within groups and work teams. Specifically, we review historical foundations, classic studies, major theories, and key research findings and discuss the various group and team contexts and wide range of moderating variables that have been examined or identified by researchers. Coverage includes both motivation losses (i.e., social loafing) and motivation gains (including social compensation and the Köhler effect). We use the Collective Effort Model and meta-analytic results to integrate our review and highlight some promising directions for future research and practice. This chapter may serve both as a stand-alone review of the literature, and as an introduction to some of the more specific motivation loss and gain issues handled in greater depth in later chapters of this book.