Question

Professor Smith has long used group projects in her courses. The groups have always performed extraordinarily well, and students seem to learn a great deal from such projects. Having just taken a new job at a different college, Dr. Smith finds that the group projects are of considerably lower quality. What might you conclude given the work of Karau and Williams (1993)?

Answer 1

The dip in the performance of groups could be due social loafing. This is the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when they are in a group than they would have had they been alone. This can result from a feeling that their effort is trivial and would not matter to the group.