An individual’s productive behavior is likely to be less with an increase in the size of the group, according to the Ringelmann effect. Ringelmann found out that the outcomes of teamwork do not come from the amount done by every person individually and the effectiveness of individual team members depends on the size of the team. For example, the efficiency of rope pulling becomes more pronounced if the number of team members is increased during the pulling. However, Steiner suggested that the performance of team member reduce because of reduced motivation and coordination loss. Other scholars performed Ringelmann’s experiment and found out that there is a substantial decrement in performance which is attributed by reduced efforts and not loss of coordination by individual team members. The reduction in productivity which is attributed by a decrease in motivation by individual team members is known as social loafing. Therefore, the hypothesis of this research is likely to be, collectivism related to the participation of team sports is likely to decrease social loafing compared to individuals who do not take part in team sports.
Many studies have observed social loafing, and there is revealed that frequency in individuals exerting less energy in cooperative than on single tasks which are very different. Few theories have tried to explain the concept of social loafing including the social impact theory, evaluation, arousal reduction and identifiability, matching of effort dispensability of effort and self-attention. Nevertheless, the theories are limited to explaining one mechanism that underpins social loafing. Few models have also been proposed accounting for more variables controlling social loafing like the joint effort model. Therefore, social loafing is experimental irrespective of an individual’s gender, a task assigned or culture and it poses negative consequences to social institutions, individuals and societies. The concept of social loafing extends to sports posing the question; is teamwork experience which is related to team sports impact social loafing amongst the players in such tasks?
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Measures
A qualitative research method and an experimental design were used including a purposive method of sampling which includes choosing participants according to their characteristic traits. The Ethics Committee in South Africa, North West and Poland University, the Committee for Ethics of the University School of Physical Education in Wroclaw, approved and approved for participants to take part in the research. The Guidelines from the Protection of Human Subjects of Research were adhered to, and it was also carried out according to the Declaration of Helsinki. The participants were free to discontinue and took part in the study voluntarily. Depending on their experience in sports, the participants were categorized into three groups with 72 men, 36 from South Africa and 36 from Poland.
Statistical Analysis
The maximum energy of pulling the rope was estimated during the experiment with the results indicator being the mean of both trials expresses as 0. 5kg.f. The expected results were calculated for each of the teams with the totality of the outcomes of each sport member creating the team. In all the Statistical analyses, the GP indicator was the unit of analysis of each particular team such that if the value of the actual group (RV) were equal to (EV), the GP would be greater than 100% and if the RV would be lower than what was anticipated, then the GP would be less than 100%. Multiple comparisons of the group's averages were used if the key result came out important and the Wilcoxon Matched Pairs was carried out to verify the importance of the dissimilarity between the EV and the actual value (RV).
Results
The % GP turned out higher for the groups having members that engaged in team sports. Additionally, there was a higher achievement of more than 100% for groups with experienced members in team sports. The average was 110.33% ± 11.65 for two-member groups, 113.72% ± 16.32 for three-member groups, 114.67± 18.29 for the four-member group and 111.91 ± 16.42 for the six-member group. From comparisons, there was a higher percentage of more than 100% for the only two-member group that had those training in the individual sport while in the other instances the achievement gauge was below 100%. Therefore, the results show that their indexes decreased with the number of group members.
The research is a between-subject design since the participants take able to take part in the treatment group. The researchers wanted to test the concept of social loafing in sports and how effort increases with several team members. The participants were grouped according to numbers and experience to determine the outcome. The groups were tested to determine which group delivered the highest results. If the researchers wanted to reduce the chances of differences and be more accurate, they used modifications of the design. For example, if one group had more experienced players and were much motivated than the other groups, this would undermine the experiment’s validity as such matched pairs would have been used to smoothen the difference between the groups.
There was potential for bias in the research since the researchers were comparing different groups of participants and found out that there was a difference between the groups in which the there was a higher indicator in groups with higher experience and training. However, they neglected to take the fact that the groups having participants from diverse social-economic and cultural backgrounds would create bias. A better method would be using participants from a single community or use random methods not always possible. The researchers were able to deal with this potential bias by grouping the team members according to their specialties and experience. Even though the participants were from the European and African contexts, the researchers exercised caution when dealing with the results
Reference
Czyż, S. H., Szmajke, A., Kruger, A., & Kübler, M. (2016). Participation in team sports can eliminate the effect of social loafing. Perceptual and Motor Skills , 123 (3), 754-768.
