TOEFL Speaking Task 3

The concept of 'social loafing' refers to the tendency for individuals to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone. This phenomenon occurs because individuals feel less accountable for the final outcome and believe their contributions are less identifiable within the group. Social loafing is most likely to occur in large groups where individual performance is not easily observed or evaluated, leading to a diffusion of responsibility.

Professor: So, let me give you an example from a real classroom. I once divided my students into two groups for a project. In Group A, each student had to write a separate section of the report, and their names were attached to their sections. In Group B, students were told to work together as a team and submit one joint report with no individual sections identified. At the end, I found that Group B's report was much shorter and less detailed than Group A's. Also, several students in Group B admitted that they did less work than they would have if they had been working alone, because they felt others would cover for them. In Group A, however, every student worked hard because they knew their specific part would be graded individually.