Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing.

Latané, Bibb; Williams, Kipling D.; Harkins, Stephen G.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.6.822

Cited by 1,808 publications

(1,097 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…However, decades of research by social psychologists have provided explanations for the less-than-ideal performance of most social groups. "Process loss" saps the resources provided by individual members through coordination failures (Steiner, 1972), social loafing (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979), groupthink (Janis, 1972;Turner & Pratkanis, 1998), and interpersonal competition (McGrath, 1984).…”

Section: Accuracy As a Criterion For Good Group Decision Rulesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

Hastie¹,

Kameda²

2005

Psychological Review

384

349

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How should groups make decisions? The authors provide an original evaluation of 9 group decision rules based on their adaptive success in a simulated test bed environment. When the adaptive success standard is applied, the majority and plurality rules fare quite well, performing at levels comparable to much more resource-demanding rules such as an individual judgment averaging rule. The plurality rule matches the computationally demanding Condorcet majority winner that is standard in evaluations of preferential choice. The authors also test the results from their theoretical analysis in a behavioral study of nominal human group decisions, and the essential findings are confirmed empirically. The conclusions of the present analysis support the popularity of majority and plurality rules in truth-seeking group decisions.Human societies rely on groups to make many important decisions. There is a deep-seated belief that groups are more accurate and more just than individuals. This belief is based on the commonsense notion that a group has more problem-solving resources than any individual member because "several heads are better than one." The belief also depends on the assumption that the group process is effective at eliciting and integrating its members' beliefs and preferences. The most popular decision rule in groups of all types is the majority rule. The majority rule has many virtues: It is "transparent" and the easiest of all social decision rules to execute; it is based on a simple principle of equal participation and equal power; it encourages the expression of sincere personal beliefs, rather than conformity; and it yields more effective problem solutions than typical (and sometimes even most accurate) members could achieve. The present article is an exploration of the capacity of the majority rule and the closely related plurality rule to produce accurate judgments.The majority rule is popular across the full spectrum of human groups from hunter-gatherer tribal societies (Boehm, 1996;Boyd & Richerson, 1985;Wilson, 1994) to modern industrial democracies (Mueller, 1989). Certainly, in ad hoc Western groups, it seems to be the decision rule most frequently adopted to make formal social choices in popular elections, legislatures, and committees. The second most popular explicit procedure in committees is an autocratic "leader decides" rule (e.g., Smith & Bliege-Bird, 2000). However, when no explicit decision rule is adopted by a group or when a designated leader appears to make the group's decision, the implicit decision rule is usually still essentially a majority rule (cf. Davis, 1973Davis, , 1982Kerr, Stasser, & Davis, 1979;Stasser, Kerr, & Davis, 1980). Even when a small group has an explicit rule other than a majority rule, the largest initial faction, that is, the plurality, is usually the ultimate winner (cf. There are several versions of majoritarian rules used in human societies. The most popular version in America is a majority-plurality rule in which the candidate that receives the most votes wins ...

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Section: Accuracy As a Criterion For Good Group Decision Rulesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

Hastie¹,

Kameda²

2005

Psychological Review

384

349

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Personen, so die Begründung, schöpften ihr Leistungspotenzial in Gruppen nicht aus, da die individuellen Beiträge nicht zurechenbar seien. Dieser Motivationsverlust wird auch als soziales Faulenzen (social loafing) bezeichnet (Karau und Williams 1993, 1995, 1997Latané, Williams, und Harkins 1979). (Brickner et al 1986;Harkins und Petty 1982).…”

Section: Motivationsverlust Mit Negativen Auswirkungen: Soziales Faulunclassified

Positive Effekte sozialen Faulenzens beim Lösen komplexer Probleme

Feuchter¹,

Funke

2004

Koelner Z.Soziol.u.Soz.Psychol

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“…For example, the mere fact that the operator knows that computer support is available could in itself lead to complacency (links from node 14, "Availability of the computer tool" per se, to node 10), in a process equivalent to what some psychologists term "social loafing": when people work with other people, diffusion of responsibility often takes place [43,44]. Importantly, specific situations with high degrees of uncertainty (node 21), especially when other more reliable sources of information are missing (node 23), may make operators vulnerable and cause them to rely on computer support more than they would normally do, even if they do not trust its reliability.…”

Section: A Case Study: Computer Aided Detection (Cad) For Mammographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Are People’s Decisions Sometimes Worse with Computer Support?

Alberdi

Strigini

Povyakalo

et al. 2009

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract. In many applications of computerised decision support, a recognised source of undesired outcomes is operators' apparent over-reliance on automation. For instance, an operator may fail to react to a potentially dangerous situation because a computer fails to generate an alarm. However, the very use of terms like "over-reliance" betrays possible misunderstandings of these phenomena and their causes, which may lead to ineffective corrective action. For instance, training or procedural changes are favored responses, but they do not address all causes of apparently "over-reliant" behaviour. We review relevant literature in the area of "automation bias" and describe the diverse mechanisms that may be involved in human errors when using computer support. We discuss these mechanisms, with reference to errors of omission when using "alerting systems", with the help of examples of novel counterintuitive findings we obtained from a case study in a health care application, as well as other examples from the literature. Permanent repository link

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Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing.

Cited by 1,808 publications

References 14 publications

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

The Robust Beauty of Majority Rules in Group Decisions.

Positive Effekte sozialen Faulenzens beim Lösen komplexer Probleme

Why Are People’s Decisions Sometimes Worse with Computer Support?

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