task4题目 Reading Part:

　　Social Loafing

　　When people work in groups to perform a task, individual group members may feel less motivated to contribute when one person is held directly responsible for completing the task. The result is that people may not work as hard, or accomplish as much as they would if they were working alone and their individual output were being measured. This decrease in personal effort, especially on a simple group task is known as social loafing. While it is not a deliberate behavior, the consequence of social loafing is less personal efficiency when working in groups than when working on one’s own.

　　Listening Part:

　　Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class.

　　(man) Now a study was done that illustrated this phenomenon. In the study people were given an ordinary task that everyone has probably done before. They were simply asked to peel potatoes, and to peel as many potatoes as possible in a given amount of time. Ok so, some people worked alone, and they were told that the number of potatoes they each peeled would be recorded. Others peeled potatoes together, as part of a group, and they were told that only the total number of potatoes peeled would be recorded. So it would be impossible to tell how many any one person had done.

　　Then researchers compared the results of people who worked alone and those who worked together to see if there was any difference. That is, they took the average score of the people working alone and compared it to the average score of the people working together in a group, and they did discover a difference! It turns out that people working in a group peeled significantly fewer potatoes that people who worked alone.

　　Question:

　　Using the example from the lecture, explain what social loafing is, and how it affects behavior.

　　答案解析：

　　1.Reading key

　　Term: Social Loafing

　　Definition: A decrease in personal effort, especially on a simple group task

　　2.Listening key

　　(2.1) People were asking to peel potatoes in a given amount of time

　　(2.2) Some worked alone and were told their personal result will be recorded

　　(2.3) Some worked as groups and were told their group result will be recorded

　　(2.4) And a personal average was taken for participants who worked as a group

　　(2.5) Result: People who worked alone peeled a lot more potatoes than the people who worked as a group

　　(2.6) Reason: people worked harder when being held directly responsible for completing the task