Social Loafing refers to which behavior?

• A. In groups, individuals always work harder than when alone.
• B. In groups, individuals work at the same rate as when alone.
• C. Tendency to reduce individual effort when working in groups.
• D. Groups always synchronize effort for maximum output.

Answer: (C)

Social loafing is the tendency to reduce individual effort when working in a group. When people are part of a group, responsibility is shared and each person may feel less personally accountable for the outcome, so they put in less effort than they would if they were working alone. This contrast helps explain why group projects often show lower per-person effort, especially as group size increases or when individual contributions aren’t easily identifiable or evaluated. In contrast, working alone ties effort directly to the result, which typically promotes higher individual effort. The other statements don’t fit because they assume people consistently work harder in groups, or that group output is always the same or maximized, which neglects how diffusion of responsibility and identifiability of contributions can reduce effort.