Day 53

Passage 53

Social Loafing

①

Social loafing describes the phenomenon that occurs when individuals exert less effort when working as a group than when working independently. It was first identified in 1913 by French agricultural engineer Max Ringlemann who recognized that a collective group's performance required less effort by individuals compared to the sum of their individual efforts. In his experiment, participants pulled on a rope attached to a strain gauge. Ringlemann noted that two individuals pulling the rope only exerted 93% of their individual efforts; a group of three individuals exerted 85% and groups of eight exerted 49% of their combined individual effort. As more individuals pulled on the rope, each individual exerted themselves less. From these observations, Ringlemann determined that individuals perform below their potential when working in a group.

②

Since Randleman's observation, social loafing has been identified in numerous studies and many causes has been traced to explain why social loafing occurs. From an individual perspective, social loafing most often occurs when individuals figure out that the specific contribution of each person is difficult to identify. A team approach often means that there is no quantifiable method of determining which members did what and to what degree and how well. It is under these circumstances that social loafing is most likely to occur. The less that an individual's contribution is likely to be noticed and graded, the more likely social loafing will happen. Also, when team members feel or believe that others are not putting forth as much effort as themselves, these team members would lessen their efforts too. This causes a downward cycle that ends at the point where only the minimum amount of work is performed.

③

It is then reasonable that social loafing tends to occur in societies where the focus is on the individual rather than the group. In a study comparing American managers with Chinese managers, researchers found that social loafing occurred with the American managers while there was no such occurrence with the Chinese managers. They explained this through a comparison between collectivist and individualist orientations. A collectivist orientation places group goals and collective action ahead of self-interests, which reinforces the participants' desires to pursue group goals in order to benefit the group. People from this orientation gain satisfaction and feelings of accomplishment from group outcomes and view their individual actions as an important contribution to the group's well-being. In contrast, an individualist's motive is focused on self-interest. Contribution toward achieving collective goals is often at odds with the self-interest motive except when differential awards are made by the group. An individualist is more likely to loaf when he/she can maximize personal gain without putting forth as much effort as had he/she done the work individually.

④

Social loafing engenders negative consequences that affect both the group as a whole, and the individual. As explained in the Ringlemann Effect, the negative social cues involved with social loafing produce decreased group performance. And when a member of a group becomes a social loafer, not only will the member reduce any opportunity he might have had to grow in his ability and knowledge, but other non-loafers might feel resentment and frustration from having to carry the weight of the work.

⑤

Given this, what kind of steps can one take to guard against social loafing? It has been discovered that the smaller the team is, the less likely there will be a member who slacks off to the detriment of the overall goal. Another useful tool is to be more specific in the assignation of tasks. When more specialized tasks are assigned to the members, it naturally creates a situation in which the group dynamic cannot reach its highest potential when one member slacks off, if that one member doesn't do the job, nobody else can and everyone suffers. Assigning tasks that speak to their unique interests and talents is also a terrific way to decrease the potential for social loafing. In fact, this has been found to be the single most effective method for avoiding social loafing. Of course, everyone enjoys a reward, so the final advice for avoiding the dangers of social loafing is to create a system for measuring individual performance and rewarding those who excelled above and beyond the team goal.

——2012年8月17日北美考试机经

It can be inferred from Paragraph 3 that____.

A. American managers are individualistically orientated

B. Chinese managers are individualistically orientated

C. American managers place group goals ahead of self-interest

D. Chinese managers' motive is focused more on self-interest

核心词汇：

词汇练习：

阅读下列句子，用所给单词的正确形式填空。

maximize potential perspective specific collective quantifiable lessen minimum orientation motive identify engender trace

1. Not only could Smith _____ rock strata by the fossils they contained, he could also see a pattern emerging: certain fossils always appear in more ancient sediments, while others begin to be seen as the strata become more recent.(TPO-6:William Smith)

2. And then the new cities and towns, squeezed by their walls, had to know and order time in order to organize_____activity and ration space.(TPO-30:The Invention of the Mechanical Clock)

3. Still, the results of the evaluation were promising, suggesting that the _____ benefits of early intervention can be substantial.(TPO-31:Early Childhood Education)

4. One can _____ such expeditions back to ancient Sumeria, the earliest known Middle Eastern civilization.(TPO-16:Trade and the Ancient Middle East)

5. And why did they not discover the geometric _____ as European artists did in the Renaissance?(TPO-16:Ancient Egyptian Sculpture)

6. When considering quantities, we would ideally like to have some estimates for over-all production from particular sites of pottery manufacture and for overall consumption at_____settlements.(TPO-29:Characteristics of Roman Pottery)

7. Numerical increases are used as _____ indicators of heightened interest in the new stimulus.(TPO-13:Methods of Studying Infant Perception)

8. As the air space around them is _____ by compaction and melting, the grains become denser.(TPO-15:Glacier Formation)

9. In turn, a deep attachment to the land, and to the stability which rural life _____ , fostered the Roman virtues: gravitas, a sense of responsibility, pietas, a sense of devotion to family and country,and iustitia,a sense of the natural order.(TPO-7:Ancient Rome and Greece)

10. Nature now seemed able to speak for itself,with a_____of interference.(TPO-22:The Birth of Photography)

11. In Denmark and Sweden agricultural reforms took place gradually from the late eighteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth, resulting in a new class of peasant landowners with a definite market _____ . (TPO-18: Industrialization in the Netherlands and Scandinavia)

12. Steam became the _____ force of the Industrial Revolution as coal and iron ore were the raw materials.(TPO-6:Powering the Industrial Revolution)

13. One moves from the task-oriented time consciousness of the peasant (working on job after another, as time and light permit) and the time-filling busyness of the domestic servant (who always had something to do) to an effort to _____ product per unit of time. (TPO-29:The Invention of the Mechanical Clock)

参考答案：

1. identify 2. collective 3. potential 4. trace 5. perspective 6. specific 7. quantifiable 8. lessened 9. engenders 10. minimum 11. orientation 12. motive 13. maximize