576 KIPLING D WILLIAMS AND STEVEN J KARAU Table2 lack of motivation.We predicted that social compensation Work condition Coa tive Collective 2445 29.20 s.then they would not have bothered con pensating 898 958 thei ad ha chose 沿0 22.61 ingfulness.In a broader context,mea aningfulness might be d 919 ine ance to the 7.99 in terms of importance or sign u ch par who ended towork har on the task.In the high meaningfulness condition,the expc (a ce.D pertorming co-work a positive the 1 ented as rather useless and trivial.We expected that pa Is in they would loaf in all other conditions. differences in effort a and coulecu e co Method k they h The high their own effort,possibly for strategi reasons.When they ex lness)b een-subjects fa on.Eight p ry strong in this sation stra y is ade ted when participants work ithalowef arise from a variety nd task used in Experi produce e demons tion,the exprimenter ergn ho acted nterpe expectations similarly could be as being silly and Int让 high ingful ess conditi erred fr east reduced arch by Kerr(983)has sh that participants loafed les ple o air-pumpin but they stil did not sua th Simila rly,a study byT they as low e given there was still reduced for ability nditions part heirciornwhcnwotikingoleg be evaluated coact Experiment 3 e student exn htmcaninlncoYing We conducte a hat the rity of participant toexperiment576 KIPLING D. WILLIAMS AND STEVEN J. KARAU Table 2 Mean Number of Uses Generated for a Knife as a Function of Perceived Co-Worker Effort and Work Condition Work condition Perceived co-worker effort Coactive Collective Low M n SD High M n SD 24.45 10 8.98 31.30 12 9.19 29.20 10 9.58 22.61 7 7.99 ticipants loafed with a co-worker who intended to work hard and tended to compensate for one who did not. It appears that the participants were willing to carry the burden of a poorly performing co-worker to maintain a positive evaluation for the group and, therefore, for themselves. Interestingly, participants seemed to be aware of the amount of effort they were exerting on the task. This is in contrast to prior social loafing research that typically has reported no per￾ceived differences in effort across coactive and collective condi￾tions. We suggest that when individuals are aware of how hard their co-workers intend to work, they become more attentive to their own effort, possibly for strategic reasons. When they ex￾pect their co-workers to work hard, they can make a conscious decision to rely on the efforts of others. Unfortunately, because our social compensation effect was not very strong in this ex￾periment, it is difficult to determine whether a similarly conscious compensation strategy is adopted when participants must work with a low effort co-worker. We suspect that expectations about co-worker behavior that produce social compensation may arise from a variety of sources. We have demonstrated their occurrence for expecta￾tions based on self-reported co-worker effort and on levels of interpersonal trust. These expectations similarly could be based on co-worker ability or on other attributions made re￾garding the co-worker (either internal to the participant or in￾ferred from statements made by others). Indeed, there is some support for social compensation, or at least reduced levels of loafing, based on low co-worker ability. Research by Kerr (1983) has shown that participants loafed less with incapable, rather than capable, co-workers on the disjunc￾tive air-pumping task, but they still did not surpass their coac￾tive performance levels. Similarly, a study by Thompson, Jack￾son, Williams, and Latane (1980) has shown that, although there was still reduced effort across ability conditions, partici￾pants were less likely to reduce their effort when working collec￾tively with a low ability partner. Experiment 3 We conducted Experiment 3 to examine two major issues. One goal was to determine whether social compensation would generalize to circumstances in which the co-worker is not ex￾pected to perform well because of lack of ability rather than lack of motivation. We predicted that social compensation would also occur when poor co-worker performance was ex￾pected on the basis of low ability. A second purpose was to test the hypothesis that social compensation is more likely to occur when the participant is concerned about the evaluation of the group's performance. In the first two experiments, we speculated that had partici￾pants perceived their participation in the task as worthless or meaningless, then they would not have bothered compensating for their poorly performing co-workers but would have chosen to loaf. In Experiment 3, we directly manipulated task mean￾ingfulness. In a broader context, meaningfulness might be de￾fined in terms of importance or significance to the individual, to others, to scientific progress, or to life in general. Specific to our experiment, we operationally defined meaningfulness by invoking manipulations that affected the degree to which partic￾ipants were concerned with the evaluation of their performance on the task.6 In the high meaningfulness condition, the experi￾ment was presented as important and related to intelligence. In the low meaningfulness condition, the experiment was pre￾sented as rather useless and trivial. We expected that partici￾pants would only be willing to compensate for a low ability co-worker in the high task meaningfulness condition, whereas they would loaf in all other conditions. Method Design and participants. The experiment used a 2 (low vs. high co-worker ability) X 2 (coactive vs. collective work condition) X 2 (low vs. high task meaningfulness) between-subjects factorial design. Partic￾ipants were 88 introductory psychology students at Purdue University who fulfilled partial course credit by their participation. Eight partici￾pants were eliminated from the final analyses because they either knew the experimenter or confederate personally or they expressed, during debriefing, knowledge about social loafing, suspicion about the experi￾mental hypotheses, or both. Procedure. The same general paradigm and task used in Experi￾ment 2 were used in this experiment. Meaningfulness manipulation. In the low meaningfulness condi￾tion, the experimenter was a female undergraduate who acted very uninvolved and uninterested in the experiment and who presented the task as being silly and trivial. In the high meaningfulness condition, the experimenter was a male graduate student who acted very involved and interested in the experiment and who presented the task as being very meaningful and related to intelligence.7 6 Although our manipulation of task meaningfulness involved multi￾ple operations, it was necessary to make this manipulation as strong as possible to overcome participants' tendency to report that the task was at least moderately meaningful. Pretesting indicated that participants were very hesitant to view the task as low in meaningfulness unless they were given a clear basis for discounting the value of the experi￾ment. Despite the multiple operations used to manipulate meaningful￾ness, we still expected participants to loaf on the low meaningfulness task because their individual contributions could be evaluated coacti￾vely but not collectively. 7 It was our intention to manipulate task meaningfulness by using a graduate student experimenter for the high meaningful condition and an undergraduate experimenter for the low meaningful condition. The resulting differences in the gender of the experimenters were due to the availability of experimenters. An analysis of variance failed to reveal any significant effects due to participant gender, suggesting that the similarity of participant to experimenter did not influence effort