SOCIAL LOAFING AND SOCIAL COMPENSATION 575 0001.Pu and left the rimenter would be at least some ewhat likely to know thei tha ncndedetot d that the experimenter might be able to make a rough ork ve hard .In the ork hare "Th of ir ar ation of th man of the task whic The main dependn arablc of not pr the te'sa n-participants a effort and t work condition in the ntia anceex ection,Fl,35) 6,p9 own h ab 2.a pr h t effort co- tive=31.3 and collective o the d The nter the read 017 .03,whereas participants w ng w n a g th actively (M.5).(1) 1.16.D ce.Then.the an e in cluded to provide background information regarding partic left the to star The tape then pla ved 12 min of new gh to pre g to rned with how wel her i Then the articipan they p d on the task(M=67.8).There were no signifi ofuses w ted The relevant to partic Results ants th ught they had n-poinscale high tive/collective work co nditio ariable Participa he y came up with more uses than did col had e M al ed h rd th manipulated:Participants in the high on though There was a significant difference in self- ported hat t (M .001.Participants were als asked hov w much abilit 002,whe reas there were no differ en wo ney thoug had at th est that nartici. nigher ability to high effo ers (M=66.6)than to lov 0,35296 58.5 hard hy 0 sked whe ther the experim nter Discussion ntebatcxtentth thought the ld he able t had perfor ually More partic that the nter wa nteres ted ir lual perlorm .84,P< the ex menter would be more likely to be able to tell how e.h the n 412). F0, SOCIAL LOAFING AND SOCIAL COMPENSATION 575 would be discarded, and that this would prevent the experimenter from knowing any person's individual score. At this point, the experimenter "noticed" that he had "forgotten" to bring his stopwatch and left the room to retrieve it. While the experi￾menter was out of the room, the confederate reported on his level of intended effort by saying one of two things. In the low effort condition, the confederate said, "This sounds like an interesting experiment, but I don't think I'm going to work very hard." In the high effort condition, the confederate said, "This sounds like an interesting experiment; I think I'm really going to work hard." The confederate's comment was worded this way so that co-worker effort could be manipulated without varying the level of evaluation of the meaningfulness of the task (which remained constant and positive). Furthermore, because the experi￾menter was not present during the confederate's announcement of in￾tended effort, there was no basis from which the participant could infer differential performance expectations on the part of the experimenter. After a brief pause long enough to retrieve a stopwatch but short enough to prevent any conversation between the participants except for the confederate's comment, the experimenter reentered the room with the stopwatch in his hand. The experimenter then read some final instructions indicating that the participants would be listening to mu￾sic during the task (this was done to mask the sound emitted from writing the uses down on the slips of paper so that participants could not monitor one another's performance). Then, after the participants put their headphones on, the experimenter started the tape, started the stopwatch, and left the room. Instructions on the tape informed the participants of what object they were to think of uses for (a knife) and when to start. The tape then played 12 min of new age music at a volume loud enough to prevent the participant from talking to the confederate and from monitoring the confederate's writing. Instruc￾tions on the tape then told the participants to stop writing and wait for further instructions. Then the participants filled out a questionnaire and were debriefed and dismissed, after which the number of uses was counted. Results Manipulation checks. Four questions (using 100-point scales) were included as manipulation checks for the effort and coac￾tive/collective work condition variables. Participants were asked how hard they thought their co-worker had tried on the task. Differential levels of co-worker effort were successfully manipulated: Participants in the high effort condition thought that their co-workers had tried harder (M = 76.6) than did par￾ticipants in the low effort condition (M = 50.7), F(l, 35) = 20.35, p < .001. Participants were also asked how much ability they thought their co-worker had at the type of task they had just completed. Although participants attributed somewhat higher ability to high effort co-workers (M = 66.6) than to low effort co-workers (M = 58.5), this difference was not significant, F(l,35) = 2.96, p=.Q9. Participants were also asked whether the experimenter was interested in their individual or their group's performance, and to what extent they thought the experimenter would be able to tell how well they had performed individually. More partici￾pants in the coactive condition (68%) than in the collective con￾dition (0%) reported that the experimenter was interested in their individual performance, x 2 (l, N = 39) = 18.84, p < .0001.5 Similarly, participants in the coactive condition thought that the experimenter would be more likely to be able to tell how they had performed individually (M = 11 A) than participants in the collective condition (M = 41.2), F(l, 35) = 35.05, p < .0001. Furthermore, brief discussions with those few partici￾pants in the collective condition who reported thinking that the experimenter would be at least somewhat likely to know their individual performance revealed that these participants did not believe that their actual scores would be known, but thought instead that the experimenter might be able to make a rough estimate as to their performance on the basis of the total group score. So it appears that both the effort and work conditions were manipulated successfully. Performance measures. The main dependent variable of in￾terest was the number of uses for a knife that the participants generated. A 2 X 2 between-participants analysis of variance was performed on the data. There was a significant interaction between co-worker effort and work condition in the predicted direction, F(\, 35) = 5.16, p < .03. As shown in Table 2, a priori contrasts revealed that participants loafed in the presence of a high effort co-worker (coactive M = 31.3 and collective M = 22.7), «(17) = 2.06, p < .03, whereas participants working with a low effort co-worker were somewhat more productive collec￾tively (M =29.2) than coactively (M = 24.5), t(l8) = -1.16, p < .14. There were no significant effects for gender. Ancillary data. A number of questionnaire items were in￾cluded to provide background information regarding partici￾pants' perceptions of the experimental task. Participants seemed to find the task rather meaningful (M = 72.2; the scales ranged from 1 [not at all] to 100 [very]), moderately fun (M = 57.2), and not very difficult to perform (M = 21.4). Participants also reported that they were indeed concerned with how well they performed on the task (M= 67.8). There were no signifi￾cant differences across variables. There were several questionnaire measures relevant to partic￾ipants' perceptions of their own effort. In the low effort condi￾tions, there were no differences between the number of uses the coactive or collective participants thought they had generated (coactive M = 26.7 and collective M = 26). In the high effort conditions, however, coactive participants tended to report that they came up with more uses than did collective participants (coactive M=26.3 and collective M= 19.9), t(l 7) = 2.1, p < .03. Participants were also asked how hard they had tried on the task. There was a significant difference in self-reported effort between work conditions in the high co-worker effort condition (coactive M = 90.6 and collective M = 71.1), /(17) = 3.5, p < .002, whereas there were no differences between work condi￾tions in the low co-worker effort condition (coactive M = 77.9 and collective M = 76.4), ns. These data suggest that partici￾pants may have been attentive to how hard they were working on the task. Discussion These results mildly support the social compensation hy￾pothesis and stand in contrast to the matching hypothesis. Par- 5 In debriefing, it became clear that many of the participants in the coactive condition misunderstood the intent of this question, thinking that even though the experimenter was looking at each individual's performance, he was still interested in how both of them did. This seems to account for why as many as 32% of the coactive participants thought the experimenter was interested in the group performance