Social loafing and group evaluation.

Recent work (e.g., Harkins, 1987; Szymanski & Harkins, 1987) has suggested that social loafing occurs because participants' outputs cannot be evaluated by the experimenter, by the coactors, or by the participants themselves. This analysis has focused on the output of the individual, but in loafing research, participants work together to produce a product. However, in this prior work participants have been unable to make anything of this product, because no standard of comparison has been made available. Several recent formulations (e.g., Goethals & Darley, 1987) have suggested that the potential for evaluation could motivate performance. Testing this hypothesis in 2 experiments, 1 using an optimizing task and the other a maximizing task, we found that providing a standard that allowed the group to evaluate its performance eliminated the loafing effect. The implications of these findings for current theories of evaluation are discussed.