Latane and his associates asked a group of male students to clap as loudly as possible as he was interested in knowing how much noise people make in group settings. One of the results was that, as the group increased the amount of noise, noise per participant decreased. This phenomenon is called as __________.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Social loafing
Option (1) Social facilitation — Incorrect. Social facilitation is better performance in the presence of others: their presence arouses a person, and this happens when each person’s effort is individually evaluated. In the clapping study each person’s effort fell.
Option (2) Social loafing — Correct. Social loafing is a reduction in individual effort when working on a collective task, one in which outputs are pooled. Latane and his associates showed it by asking groups of students to clap or cheer as loudly as possible: as the group grew, the total noise rose but the noise made by each participant fell.
Option (3) Social identity — Incorrect. Social identity refers to those aspects of a person that link her or him to a social or cultural group, such as religion, caste or region. It says nothing about how much effort a person puts into a group task.
Option (4) Prosocial behaviour — Incorrect. Prosocial behaviour means helping others, doing good to them without expecting anything in return. Clapping more softly in a group is not about helping anyone.
Note 1: The concept in Option (4), ‘prosocial behaviour’, was there in the pre-rationalised NCERT, which NTA followed in 2023, and is not there in the NCERT book (2025-26); explained here for the benefit of the students.
Note 2: A similar question was also asked in CUET (UG) 2024 on 19-07-2024 (Slot 1).
NCERT (2025-26): “Social Loafing … Social facilitation research suggests that presence of others leads to arousal and can motivate individuals to enhance their performance if they are already good at solving something. This enhancement occurs when a person’s efforts are individually evaluated. What would happen if efforts of an individual in a group are pooled so that you look at the performance of the group as a whole? Do you know what often happens? It has been found that individuals work less hard in a group than they do when performing alone. This points to a phenomenon referred to as ‘social loafing’. Social loafing is a reduction in individual effort when working on a collective task, i.e. one in which outputs are pooled with those of other group members. An example of such a task is the game of tug-of-war. It is not possible for you to identify how much force each member of the team has been exerting. Such situations give opportunities to group members to relax and become a free rider. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in many experiments by Latane and his associates who asked group of male students to clap or cheer as loudly as possible as they (experimenters) were interested in knowing how much noise people make in social settings. They varied the group size; individuals were either alone, or in groups of two, four and six. The results of the study showed that although the total amount of noise rose up, as size increased, the amount of noise produced by each participant dropped. In other words, each participant put in less effort as the group size increased.…” |