Protestant Work Ethic Moderates Social Loafing

Diana L. SmrtWestern Illinois University at Quad Cities

Steven J. KarauSouthern Illinois University at Carbondale

Prior research on social loafing has emphasized situational factors and has largelyneglected personality influences. The current study attempted to close this gap byexploring the potential for Protestant work ethic (PWE) to reduce or eliminate socialloafing. Individuals who had been pretested on PWE were asked to work eithercoactively or collectively on an idea generation task. As predicted, PWE moderated theeffects of work condition on individual effort such that PWE scores were negativelyassociated with social loafing. These results highlight the potential importance ofpersonality influences on group motivation and suggest that individuals with a strongpersonal work ethic are unlikely to engage in social loafing. Implications for theory andfuture research are discussed.

Keywords: Protestant work ethic, social loafing, motivation

Groups are often indispensable to many im-portant life activities and have the potential forenhancing performance and productivity. How-ever, this potential is seldom fully realized. Onewell-documented limitation of groups is the ten-dency for individuals to exert less effort whenworking in a group than when working individ-ually, a phenomenon known as social loafing(Latane, Williams, & Harkins, 1979). A meta-analysis of 78 studies found that social loafing isrobust, moderate in magnitude, and generalizesfairly well across various settings, tasks, andsubject populations (Karau & Williams, 1993).Fortunately, a number of factors have beenfound to reduce or eliminate social loafing, andmotivation gains are even possible in some sit-uations (e.g., Weber & Hertel, 2007; Williams& Karau, 1991). However, the bulk of priorresearch has emphasized situational moderatorsof social loafing (such as group size, account-ability, evaluation potential, task meaningful-

ness, and group cohesiveness) to the relativeexclusion of personality factors (Karau & Wil-liams, 2001). Situational moderators are indeedhelpful for designing interventions to reduce oreliminate social loafing, but it is also importantto understand what types of individuals mightbe most or least prone to social loafing. Al-though most individuals appear susceptible tosocial loafing on collective tasks, it seems likelythat there are some important individual differ-ences in group motivation as well. In particular,individuals with a strong dispositional commit-ment to hard work might be especially likely towork hard on collective tasks as well as onindividual tasks. In the current research we di-rectly addressed this issue by examining thepotential for Protestant work ethic to reduce oreliminate social loafing.

Hypothesis Development

We reason that Protestant work ethic (PWE,Weber, 1904-05/1958) has special relevance toone’s willingness to exert effort in situationsthat allow an opportunity to take it easy, anopportunity that is readily available on manycollective tasks. Specifically, we adopt Beit-Hallahmi’s (1979) definition of PWE as “anorientation toward work which emphasizes ded-ication to hard work, deferment of immediaterewards, conservation of resources, the savingof surplus wealth, and the avoidance of idlenessand waste in any form” (p. 263). Because indi-

This article was published Online First July 4, 2011.Diana L. Smrt, Department of Management and Market-

ing, Western Illinois University at Quad Cities; Steven J.Karau, Department of Management, Southern Illinois Uni-versity at Carbondale.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed

to Diana L. Smrt, Department of Management and Marketing,Western Illinois University at Quad Cities, Moline, IL 61265-5881, or to Steven J. Karau, Department of Management,Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901-4627.E-mail: dl-smrt@wiu.edu or skarau@business.siuc.edu

Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice © 2011 American Psychological Association2011, Vol. 15, No. 3, 267–274 1089-2699/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0024484

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viduals with high levels of PWE emphasize theimportance of hard work and discipline, theyare likely to be better able than most individualsto resist the tendency to slack off on group tasksand instead continue to work hard and persistwith their efforts.We used the Collective Effort Model (CEM;

Karau &Williams, 1993) to refine our key PWEhypothesis. The CEM integrates key elementsfrom expectancy-value (e.g., Vroom, 1964), so-cial identity (e.g., Abrams & Hogg, 1990), andgroup-level social comparison (Goethals &Darley, 1987) theories. Based on expectancy-value logic, the model states that people willonly work hard on a collective task if theyexpect their efforts to be instrumental in acquir-ing outcomes that they personally value. Thus,social loafing often occurs because the link be-tween individual effort and valued outcomes istypically less apparent on collective tasks thanon individual tasks. On collective tasks, thereare additional contingencies between effort andvalued outcomes, such as the actions of othergroup members and the division of recognitionand rewards across multiple individuals. Socialloafing may also occur because individuals at-tach less value to collective performance out-comes (whether objective or subjective) than toindividual ones. Based on social identity andgroup-level social comparison logic, the modelstates that outcomes that provide informationrelevant to one’s self-evaluation are likely to beviewed as valuable (Karau & Williams, 1993).Thus, the CEM suggests that individuals who

attach greater value to performing well on col-lective tasks are not likely to engage in socialloafing, provided that their efforts are instru-mental to performing well on the collectivetask. Individuals with low levels of PWE do notattach much importance to hard work for itsown sake, and are therefore likely to only workhard when they have to. Thus, they are muchmore likely to work hard on an individual taskbecause they are accountable for their inputs,but are likely to succumb to the temptation totake advantage of others’ efforts when workingon a collective task. In contrast, individuals withhigh levels of PWE place a premium on hardwork and persistence in general, and are there-fore likely to want to perform well on an effort-ful task regardless of whether or not they areeasily accountable to others. Thus, we predictedthat PWE would moderate social loafing, such

that higher PWE scores would be associatedwith lower levels of social loafing.

Relevant Prior Research

Protestant Work Ethic

The large body of existing research on PWEprovides a compelling foundation for our keyhypothesis. Specifically, PWE scores (or en-dorsement of PWE-related values) have beenfound to be positively associated with hardwork (Poulton & Ng, 1988); performance onrepetitive tasks (Merrens & Garrett, 1975);steady work rates and persistence (Tang, 1990);working while commuting or traveling (Green-berg, 1978); work-related loyalty (Ali & Azim,1995); satisfaction with work experiences (Saal,1978); an internal locus of control (Furnham,1986); expecting success and having negative re-actions to failure (Christopher & Schlenker,2005); and a greater emphasis on taking bothindividual (Feather, 1984) and social (MacDonald,1971) responsibility for performance outcomes(for a review of the PWE literature, see Furnham,1990a). Thus, there is strong support for the gen-eral notion that individuals high in PWE shouldshow a commitment to hard work, persistence,and effort that is resilient to challenges and temp-tations that other individuals may succumb to. Inthe current research, we reasoned that a greatergeneral commitment to work and resilience todistractions from work among individuals high inPWE would transfer to group motivation as well,such that they would continue to exert high levelsof effort on a collective task, despite the opportu-nity to reduce their efforts at the expense of othergroup members.

Personality, Culture, and Social Loafing

Unfortunately, we are aware of no studiesthat have directly examined the effects of PWEon social loafing. Although most prior researchon social loafing has focused on situational fac-tors, a handful of studies do provide initialdocumentation of relationships between socialloafing and selected personality traits. Somestudies seem to suggest that social loafing canbe reduced or eliminated when individuals havea dispositional tendency to view the specifictask they are performing as meaningful. Forexample, Smith, Kerr, Markus, and Stasson

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(2001) found that high need for cognition indi-viduals did not loaf on a cognitively involvingtask. Huguet, Charbonnier, and Monteil (1999)found that individuals who viewed themselvesas superior in performance to others did not loafwhen the task was challenging. A field study bySorrentino and Sheppard (1978) also found thatapproval-oriented individuals swam faster ingroup than in individual competitions. Regard-ing individual differences more relevant to gen-eral work motivation, Hart, Karau, Stasson, andKerr (2004) found that individuals high in needfor achievement did not engage in social loafingregardless of the effort level they expected froma coworker, whereas those low in need forachievement loafed when working with a co-worker who was expected to work hard. Thisprovides initial support for our reasoning thatindividual differences relevant to general effortor motivational preferences (at least in the caseof the pursuit of personal goals or standards inthe Hart et al. study) can influence group moti-vation and allow certain individuals to resisttemptations to engage in social loafing. Regard-ing more general personality dimensions, Tan &Tan (2008) found that conscientiousness wasnegatively related with perceived loafing inclassroom project teams.Cultural influences have also been found to

play a role in social loafing that may reflectindividualistic versus collectivistic work prefer-ences (Triandis, 1989). For example, in the clas-sic article in which they coined the term “socialloafing” and described it as a social disease,Latane et al. (1979) speculated that cultureplays a role in what types of efforts are valued,noting that historical productivity figures weremuch higher on collective or communal farms(kolkhoz and kibbutz) in Russia and Israel thanthey were for comparable private operations orplots. Earley (1993) found high levels of col-lective effort among individuals from collectivecultures when they were working with a famil-iar group. Similarly, Latane (1986) found thatIndian participants worked harder with a friendthan when working alone. An initial meta-analytic comparison (Karau & Williams, 1993)suggested lower (albeit still significant) levelsof social loafing among participants from East-ern, rather than Western, cultures. Taken to-gether, these findings may suggest that differentcontextual perceptions of work ethic, as influ-

enced by culture, may influence the occurrenceand magnitude of social loafing.

PWE and Motivation Losses in Groups

Although we are aware of no studies thathave examined the relationship between PWEand the general phenomenon of social loafing, arecent study by Abele and Diehl (2008) didexamine the relationship that PWE may havewith more specific motivation losses known as“free rider” and “sucker” effects. In the para-digm used to study sucker and free-rider effects,individuals are asked to work over repeatedtrials with a partner on a disjunctive task inwhich the group succeeds if either partner’seffort meets a preestablished criterion. By usingeither a confederate or false feedback, the situ-ation is designed to show the partner as eitherregularly succeeding at the task (making theindividual’s own efforts entirely dispensable orunnecessary) or regularly failing (such that theindividual’s own efforts determine whether thegroup succeeds or fails). Kerr (1983) showedthat individuals produced low effort levels inboth situations, refusing to “play the sucker”and cover up for a partner who repeatedly per-formed poorly on the task, and “free riding” onthe efforts of a partner whose effort alwaysresulted in success for the group.Abele and Diehl (2008) used items from mul-

tiple PWE scales to examine three components(identified via factor analysis) of PWE in rela-tion to both the sucker effect and the free-ridereffect. They found that the sucker effect wasmoderated by all three studied components ofPWE, but the free rider effect was only moder-ated by one of the three (belief in the instru-mental value of work). The moderation of thesucker effect supports our hypothesis that indi-viduals with high levels of PWE might showhigh levels of effort in situations where otherswould slack off. Specifically, high PWE indi-viduals may be willing to work hard enough forthe group to succeed, even when they are fullyaware that a lazy partner who is contributingnothing is taking advantage of their efforts. Onthe surface, the lack of moderation of the free-rider effect on two of the three components ofPWE (the desire for equity in work and belief inthe ethical value of work) would seem contraryto our hypothesis. However, it must be consid-ered that the individual’s efforts are entirely

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dispensable when one’s partner is always suc-ceeding on a disjunctive task. Thus, even highPWE individuals may not bother to exert higheffort levels on a task for which their efforts areentirely unnecessary, unless their work ethicincludes strong feelings that working hard al-ways has some potential value (as opposed tostrong feelings that working hard is the fair orethical thing to do).Taken as a whole, Abele and Diehl’s results

suggest that PWE is likely to be positively re-lated with effort on a group task, even in caseswhere others are taking advantage of one’s ef-forts, except for unusual cases in which one’sefforts are totally unnecessary for the group tosucceed (and even in these latter cases, highPWE individuals will still work hard if theybelieve strongly in the instrumental value ofwork). Differences across the three facets ofPWE only appeared when the individual’s ef-forts were entirely unnecessary for group suc-cess. When individual efforts were useful to thegroup, all three facets of PWE moderated mo-tivation losses.Although Abele and Diehl’s (2008) findings

certainly provide insight into some motivationalprocesses within groups, their results only ad-dress situations in which one is working on adisjunctive task with a partner that is known tobe capable but who always fails anyhow (in thecase of the sucker effect) or who always suc-ceeds such that one’s own efforts are entirelyunnecessary (in the case of the free rider effect).However, on many more common group tasks,members have a chance to make at least someuseful contributions in a context where othersare not taking complete advantage of their ef-forts. In the current research, we employ a stan-dard social loafing paradigm using an additivetask in which each member’s inputs directlycontribute to the group total to examine whetherPWE moderates the more general phenomenonof social loafing.

The Current Research

In the current research, we directly examinewhether individual differences in one’s generaldedication to hard work and discipline moderatesocial loafing. We conducted our study in twoPhases. In Phase 1, participants completed ameasure of PWE. In Phase 2, a subset of theseindividuals participated in a laboratory experi-

ment in which they worked either coactively orcollectively on an idea generation task (Harkins& Petty, 1982), allowing us to assess the rela-tionship between PWE and social loafing. Wepredicted that PWE would moderate social loaf-ing, such that increases in PWE would be asso-ciated with a reduced tendency to work lesshard collectively than individually.

Methods

Participants were undergraduate students en-rolled in one of three business classes in eitherof two semesters at a small public university inthe Midwestern United States. They receivedextra credit points for class in return for theirparticipation. In Phase 1, 124 participants com-pleted Mirels and Garrett’s (1971) PWE scale atthe beginning of a class. The 19-item Mirels andGarrett scale has been widely used to assessPWE and shows good evidence for internalconsistency (with alphas typically ranging from.67 to .79 across studies), as well as initialevidence for concurrent and predictive validity(e.g., Furnham, 1990b; McHoskey, 1994). Re-sponses are assessed using a 5-point rating scaleranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5(strongly agree). Our sample had a mean PWEscore of 63.29 (SD � 7.80).A subset of 74 individuals from Phase 1 also

participated in Phase 2 approximately twoweeks later. Because the idea generation task isverbal in nature and could be influenced byEnglish fluency, we excluded five non-nativespeakers. The final sample of 69 participantsconsisted of 28 men and 41 women with anaverage age of 27.22 years. All participantswere employed with a mean of 10.36 years ofwork experience. Groups of two to seven indi-viduals (group size M � 5.15) arrived to alaboratory room at preestablished times andwere seated on one side of a long table, witheach seat separated from the others by largedividers. Each group was randomly assigned toeither coactive or collective work conditions.Participants were asked not to talk or commu-nicate with each other in any way during theexperiment.Written instructions were distributed and par-

ticipants were asked to read along while theexperimenter read the instructions. Participantswere told that they would be working on abrainstorming task for 12 minutes in which it

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was extremely important to generate as manyuses for an object as they possibly could andwrite each use down on an answer sheet. Par-ticipants in the coactive condition were told thatwe were interested in their individual perfor-mance and that their answer sheets would becollected and evaluated individually. Partici-pants in the collective condition were told thatwe were interested in their performance as agroup, that we would evaluate the total groupperformance, and that all participants in theroom shared the responsibility for the group’sperformance. In addition, participants in thecollective condition were told that we would askthem to shuffle their answers sheets together atthe end of the brainstorming task and placethem in a manila folder before they were col-lected so that we would not be able to identifyanyone’s individual performance.After the instructions were read, the experi-

menter addressed any questions, informed theparticipants that the object they were to generateuses for was a knife, and left the room. At theend of the 12-min session, the experimentercollected the answer sheets and asked partici-pants to complete a brief questionnaire contain-ing manipulation checks and items asking aboutperceptions of the task. Upon completion of thequestionnaires, the experimenter provided moreinformation about the research, thanked partic-ipants for their participation, and adjourned thesession.

Results

To assess the adequacy of our manipulationof the coactive versus collective work condi-tion, we asked participants to answer two itemsasking how likely they thought it was that wewould know exactly how well they had per-formed on the task individually, and how con-cerned we were with evaluating their individualperformance. These items were averaged to pro-duce an index (r � .63). Individuals in thecoactive condition (M � 6.94) scored muchhigh on this index than did individuals in thecollective condition (M � 3.03), F(1,68) � 80.33, p � .0001. Thus, the work condi-tion manipulation was successful.We tested our key PWE hypothesis using

moderated regression analysis with work con-dition as a categorical variable and PWE (cen-tered) as a continuous variable. The coefficient

for work condition was marginally significant,B � �2.87, � � �.23, t � �1.99, p � .051.Thus, overall effort levels were higher for indi-viduals who worked coactively (M � 34.09)than for individuals who worked collectively(M � 29.00), consistent with the standard socialloafing effect. More important, PWE moderatedthe effects of work condition on effort in thepredicted manner, B � .39, � � .25, t � 2.16,p � .035. To reveal the pattern of this interac-tion, we estimated means from the regressionmodel for individuals scoring 1 SD above and 1SD below the PWE mean. As shown in Figure1, low levels of PWE were associated withmuch higher effort in the coactive conditionthan in the collective condition (indicating so-cial loafing) but this difference was reducedsignificantly as levels of PWE increased, withthe difference eliminated at high levels of PWE.This provides strong support for our key hy-pothesis that PWE moderates social loafing.

Discussion

We found that PWE moderated social loafingsuch that increases in PWE scores were associ-ated with a significant reduction in the usualtendency to work harder coactively than collec-tively. This provides further documentation forindividual differences in motivation to workhard on collective tasks and shows that not allindividuals engage in social loafing. Namely,whereas individuals with low levels of PWEreadily engage in social loafing, individualshigh in PWE—who have a strong dispositionalcommitment to hard work—appear to be resil-ient in the face of opportunities to slack off anddo not succumb to the usual tendency to take iteasy and free ride on the efforts of others whenworking on a collective task. This suggests thatPWE contributes to high effort levels regardlessof whether the task is individual or group innature. Stated differently, whereas individualswith low levels of PWE are likely to be strategicabout their efforts and only work hard whenthey have to, individuals with high levels ofPWE are likely to work hard regardless due totheir belief in the value of hard work, contribu-tion, and avoiding idleness or inactivity. Giventhat the bulk of the existing literature on socialloafing has explored mostly situational factors,our results reinforce the potential importancethat personality can play in collective motiva-

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tion. Our results also provide support for theCEM by showing that an individual differencerelevant to the relative value attached to collec-tive outcomes has a significant impact on one’swillingness to work hard on collective tasks.Specifically, individuals who attach greatervalue to hard work in general are significantlyless likely to engage in social loafing than indi-viduals who attach relatively more value totasks that they are individually accountable forthan to group tasks on which they can hide inthe crowd and rely on the efforts of others.Our study has a number of strengths. First,

our research was theory-driven, using hypothe-sized relationships derived from the CEM.Second, our use of a controlled laboratory ex-periment allowed us to control for extraneousvariables and draw stronger causal inferences.Third, our research has clear potential practicaland managerial implications. However, our re-search also has limitations that should be ac-knowledged. Specifically, our use of a labora-tory study employing college students mayplace constraints on external validity. Futureresearch in field settings would be useful to

cross-validate our findings. Also, because ourstudy represents a preliminary investigation ofPWE and motivation within groups it takes thecrucial step of documenting the existence of arelationship between PWE and social loafing,but did not endeavor to fully articulate the pre-cise mechanisms underlying that relationship.We also recognize that documenting that PWEcan moderate social loafing is only a first step inidentifying the full range of conditions underwhich PWE is likely to overcome typical moti-vation losses in groups or even lead to potentialmotivation gains.The current research has relatively clear po-

tential implications for practitioners as well.Our results could benefit managers by sheddingadditional light on what types of people aremost likely to slack off versus work hard ingroups. Namely, if the present results were toreceive converging support from future replica-tions and field studies, they would clearly sug-gest that levels of work ethic should be carefullyconsidered when assigning individuals to grouptasks and deciding what level of monitoring orincentives to deploy when managing the group.

15

20

25

30

35

40

hgihwol

PWE Score

Use

s G

ener

ated

coactive

collective

Figure 1. Social loafing moderated by Protestant work ethic.

272 SMRT AND KARAU

Namely, those individuals with low levels ofcommitment to hard work are likely to takeadvantage of teams unless they are held ac-countable for their individual contributions orgiven strong situational reasons to contributedespite opportunities to slack off. In contrast,individuals with high levels of commitment tohard work are likely to expend high effort onboth individual and group tasks, and may notrequire interventions, monitoring, or incentivesthat might otherwise be necessary to motivateindividuals to make strong contributions to col-lective efforts.Our study also suggests several promising

areas for future research. Specifically, studiescould seek to identify additional personalitycharacteristics that influence motivation ingroups. It would be interesting to study addi-tional variables that might influence collectiveeffort either overall or on specific tasks. Karau,Markus, and Williams (2000) use the CEM toidentify a number of additional personalitycharacteristics that might be logically expectedto affect collective motivation, including self-esteem, self-monitoring, and locus of control.Future research could address potential anteced-ents or moderators of PWE and social loafing,such as educational background, family up-bringing, or beliefs about the value of specifictasks or work environments. Last but not least,a promising avenue for future related researchwould be to test the hypothesized relationshipsin organizational settings or among intactgroups. We hope the present study will be use-ful in stimulating additional attention to taskand personality influences on individual moti-vation in groups.

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Received October 3, 2010Revision received May 5, 2011

Accepted May 11, 2011 �

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