Abstract
The present study was conducted among groups of university students to determine whether self-efficacy had an effect on social loafing. Each of the 80 participants were split into four conditions: collective (achievement priming or no priming) and coactive (achievement priming or no priming), where individuals in the primed conditions were asked to recall their greatest achievement. Each of the participants answered a question about their confidence level and then were told whether their group (collective) or individual (coactive) performance was assessed. They then participated in a word-association task and were asked to fill out a final questionnaire based on their experience. The independent variable is the achievement priming, …show more content…
It was hypothesised that those in the coactive conditions would individually generate more words than those in the collective conditions; however those in the conditions which were primed for achievement would generate more words than those in the conditions which were not primed. The manipulation check was successful, as those who were primed for confidence rated themselves as more confident with the task than those who were not primed. Participants in the coactive no-prime condition generated more words overall than those in the primed coactive condition; however, there was no significant difference in words generated between the collective conditions. These findings were not consistent with past literature, as self-efficacy has previously been found to improve the amount of effort put into tasks by individuals (Susman & Sanna, 1992; Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998; Turan et al, 2013). Therefore, if self-efficacy (or in this case, achievement) is primed, social loafing should be buffered or eliminated. This did not occur in this study: the priming merely increased confidence among participants, however did not significantly improve their performance. It needs to be considered, however, that there are a large number of factors which increase or decrease self-efficacy which were not measured in this study, such as task complexity and self-referent thought processes (Stajman & Luthans,
The present study was conducted among groups of university students to determine whether self-efficacy had an effect on social loafing. Each of the 80 participants were split into four conditions: collective (achievement priming or no priming) and coactive (achievement priming or no priming), where individuals in the primed conditions were asked to recall their greatest achievement. Each of the participants answered a question about their confidence level and then were told whether their group (collective) or individual (coactive) performance was assessed. They then participated in a word-association task and were asked to fill out a final questionnaire based on their experience. The independent variable is the achievement priming, …show more content…
It was hypothesised that those in the coactive conditions would individually generate more words than those in the collective conditions; however those in the conditions which were primed for achievement would generate more words than those in the conditions which were not primed. The manipulation check was successful, as those who were primed for confidence rated themselves as more confident with the task than those who were not primed. Participants in the coactive no-prime condition generated more words overall than those in the primed coactive condition; however, there was no significant difference in words generated between the collective conditions. These findings were not consistent with past literature, as self-efficacy has previously been found to improve the amount of effort put into tasks by individuals (Susman & Sanna, 1992; Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998; Turan et al, 2013). Therefore, if self-efficacy (or in this case, achievement) is primed, social loafing should be buffered or eliminated. This did not occur in this study: the priming merely increased confidence among participants, however did not significantly improve their performance. It needs to be considered, however, that there are a large number of factors which increase or decrease self-efficacy which were not measured in this study, such as task complexity and self-referent thought processes (Stajman & Luthans,