Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the phenomenon of social loafing?

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Question restatement: The prompt asks which scenario best illustrates social loafing.
Option 1: Exerting minimal effort on a project that is graded as a group. This directly captures the core idea of social loafing: when individuals work in a group, they may reduce their personal effort because they feel their individual contribution is less noticeable and the group outcome is shared. The phenomenon is well-documented in social psychology and is often observed in group projects where everyone rides on the collective effort.
Option 2: Self-censoring your opinion so that the group meeting ends more quickly. This describes conformity or groupthink dynamics, where individuals suppress dissenting opinions to maintain harmony or speed up decisions. It is not social loafing, since the focus is on communication and conformity rather than reduced effort.
Option 3: Acting more impulsively because of being in a group. This aligns with deindividuation, a related but distinct concept where individuals may act more spontaneously or aggressively when anonymous or in a group, due to reduced sense of personal accountability. It does not characterize reduced effort or contribution in a task toward a group outcome.
Option 4: Showing minimal concern over other people’s problems. This reflects diffusion of responsibility or apathy in crowds, sometimes linked to the bystander effect, but it centers on lack of concern for others rather than reduced personal effort on a shared task. It does not specifically depict loafing in task performance.
In summary, option 1 best fits the definition of social loafing by illustrating a decrease in individual effort within a group task, whereas the other options point to conformity, deindividuation, or bystander phenomena that are conceptually distinct from social loafing.

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Which of the following scenarios best illustrates the phenomenon of social loafing?

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