When Jerry thought he was the only person who was assigned the job of contacting alumni for a 15-year reunion, he spent several
hours on the phone each evening trying to reach members of his graduating class. When he learned that eight other people were also working on contacting the alumni, he spent only 30 minutes each night making phone calls. The process that would best explain the decrease in Jerry’s effort when he learned that he was working as part of a larger group, is:
Social loafing: In social psychology, the term social loafing is defined as the phenomenon in which an individual is prone to give less effort on a particular task if he or she is involved in a group rather than working alone.
When an individual tends to work in a group then he or she tends to improve his or her accomplishment on a particular task by enhancing his or her talent and skills in that particular group. Social loafing gets promoted through the size of the group.
In the question above, the decrease in Jerry’s effort would be best described in terms of social loafing.
