SOCIAL LOAFING AND SOCIAL COMPENSATION 571 group.She felt that sheco oaf they with an expectancy-value framework ifindi believed that her orkers were probably not as moti ted or the ad n e but to do e on the ta to lead to highly valued ou s,ind ite att empts to ass ure her this did not ha sically me ngful or a with the evah a all of th of the group e by the e ital or hi order for for the ot up am cur.It is ely,h er,that individua On produce soc ompensation is the expectation that wes are p ose that ome pers et tha to the col ve goal to compe fo the the d sire for could ead pe ople to comper ns of t or nle de ck of tr rm wel ost re used t th its that ties are the lves with ot on is that the gro maduct is ins ant to the indiv idual If the task the group produc uggests tha bec of the e also Cialdini t al 1976).Goetha d Da rod s not matter to th 1987 stated then he or she will be motivated to avoid a poor hen (p.33).Presum a negati ial id group per nance by compensating for the poorly performing These hyr rigatbothwih xpectancy-value d be to k harder.that is.to 107 heir 3 p the 1964)suggest that individuals will be willing to exer man canno be eval d.Harkins an ieve th is heing Applied to social loafing.we would expe an ind he perfo ch the dy individu will h the orn by of c is d as t to self hen orker ce indi h K (or e tas rker perform well.the conti of the oth rs is expe ed to be good,then individuals can opt to nd the roup ev inputs.Hou when individuals expect their c rkers t Both of these theoretical pe ctives also explain why socia orm poorly,the co and the instrumentalit of perfo ance to ou ohe cy be an people are othe than individu ofother they expect their co-w rkers to perform well. mbers nd attributes of the task rm well ma not be sufficient to i motivation.Indi all of the s ten th the ith this poir h ggests tha nance onk SOCIAL LOAFING AND SOCIAL COMPENSATION 571 group. She felt that she could not rely on the others because they would take advantage of the collective task and loaf. She also believed that her co-workers were probably not as motivated or able as she. She felt she had no choice but to do everything that the group was supposed to do to merely share an A on the paper. Despite attempts to assure her that this did not have to happen, she ended up doing almost all of the work. Why? We are proposing that under some conditions, people may actually work harder in a collective setting than in a coactive setting in order to compensate for the others in their group, an effect we refer to as social compensation. One factor that might produce social compensation is the expectation that other group members are performing insufficiently. Under these cir￾cumstances, we propose that individuals will feel compelled to contribute more to the collective goal to compensate for the inadequate contributions of their co-workers. The perception of inadequate co-worker contributions may be derived from a general lack of trust in the reliability of others to perform well when their contributions are pooled with those of others or from direct knowledge of co-workers' insufficient efforts or abil￾ities. The second factor we believe may be necessary to produce compensation is that the group product is in some way impor￾tant to the individuals involved. If the task or the group product is seen as meaningless, then there is no need to compensate for poorly performing co-workers, because the evaluation of the group product simply does not matter to the individual. If, how￾ever, the evaluation of the group product is important to the individual, then he or she will be motivated to avoid a poor group performance by compensating for the poorly performing co-workers. These hypotheses are consistent both with expectancy-value models of effort and with self-validation theories. For example, expectancy-value models of effort (e.g., Heckhausen, 1977; Vroom, 1964) suggest that individuals will be willing to exert effort on a task only to the degree that they expect their effort to result in performance that is instrumental in obtaining valued outcomes. Applied to social loafing, we would expect an indi￾vidual's motivation and effort to be greatest when working on a task in which the group performance is strongly contingent on his or her individual effort and when group performance is expected to lead to outcomes that are highly valued by the indi￾vidual (e.g., a favorable evaluation). Thus, expectations of co￾worker performance are likely to strongly influence individual motivation on collective tasks. When individuals expect their co-workers to perform well, the contingency between their own effort and the group performance is reduced because the group is likely to perform well even if the individuals reduce their own inputs. However, when individuals expect their co-workers to perform poorly, the contingency between their own effort and the group performance is actually enhanced. Thus, when out￾come valence and the instrumentality of performance to out￾comes are held constant, people are likely to work harder when they expect their co-workers to perform poorly and less hard when they expect their co-workers to perform well. However, the mere expectation that one's co-workers will not perform well may not be sufficient to increase motivation. Indi￾viduals will be concerned with the quality of the group perfor￾mance only when it is instrumental to obtaining valued out￾comes. In accord with an expectancy-value framework, if indi￾viduals expect their co-workers to perform poorly, they will not be willing to compensate unless they expect their performance on the task to lead to highly valued outcomes. Thus, individuals are more likely to compensate when they find the task to be intrinsically meaningful or are concerned with the evaluation of the group's performance by the experimenter, themselves, or co-workers. We do not mean to imply that the task must be viewed as vital or highly meaningful in order for compensation to occur. It is likely, however, that individuals will be unwilling to compensate for poorly performing co-workers if they expect their performance on the task to be irrelevant to obtaining an outcome that has at least some personal value. Theoretical orientations focusing on the self also suggest that the desire for self-validation could lead people to compensate for co-workers on a collective task. Several theories suggest that people desire positive evaluation, especially in comparison with others. Most research has focused on social comparison at the individual level, but Goethals and Darley's (1987) revision of social comparison theory suggests that people not only com￾pare themselves with others for self-validation, but they also compare the groups to which they belong with other groups for the same reasons. Similarly, social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) suggests that often people gain positive self-iden￾tity through the accomplishments of the groups to which they belong (see also Cialdini et al., 1976). Goethals and Darley (1987) stated that "individuals experiencing negative social identity are predicted to leave their groups or attempt to make them better" (p. 33). Presumably, a negative social identity could be anticipated if one is performing on a collective task with unproductive co-workers. One way to make the group bet￾ter would be to work harder, that is, to compensate. Consistent with the notion that people are concerned for their group's evaluation even when their individual perfor￾mances cannot be evaluated, Harkins and Szymanski (1989) found that on collective tasks people are less likely to loaf if they believe the performance of their group is being compared with the performance of other groups. In the present context, when working on a collective task with others who are expected to perform poorly, individuals will be motivated to bolster the performance of their group by increasing their own efforts. This would be true only to the extent that performance on the task is perceived as pertinent to self-validation, hence, only when the task (or the evaluation of the task performance) is perceived as meaningful. On the other hand, if the performance of the others is expected to be good, then individuals can opt to reduce their efforts and still receive a favorable group evalua￾tion. Both of these theoretical perspectives also explain why social compensation has not emerged in previous research. According to the expectancy-value model, loafing occurs because there is a higher contingency between individual effort and valued out￾comes coactively than collectively. As group size increases, fac￾tors other than individual effort (e.g., the effort of other group members and attributes of the task) increasingly determine group performance, and valued outcomes (e.g., a favorable evalu￾ation) are diffused among all of the group members. Consistent with this point, the self-validation approach suggests that peo￾ple can more effectively control their evaluations when working