Social problems and social loafing

Kugihara Naoki

doi:10.18910/25844

Social loafing is considered to be associated with various social problems. This paper is intended to examine public assistance, welfare and a voter turnout. Each of these has factors that may be causing social loafing. The welfare cheats may not have following recognition: contributing to society (recognition associated with a necessity of effort), enriching a life by working (associated with instrumentality) and accepting and evaluating by their own efforts (associated with a possibility of evaluation). They may also not able to find out a meaning to working (associated with a value of reward). All of these recognitions are considered to be the cognitive elements of social loafing. The latest economic conditions and welfare system have a possibility of promoting the increase in people with such recognition. The factors which influence social loafing are also considered to be related to voter turnout. In the case of a national election, the weights of one vote are 80,000-320,000 (number of electors/ number of seats). Probably the probability that individual voting behavior will influence an election outcome will be low, and may be the same grade as public lottery. Therefore, it is natural that the probability of social loafing (abstention from voting) becomes large. The election may be similar to the typical social loafing experiment whose group size is extremely large. However, it is a surprising phenomenon that 60 percent of people go to polls despite such a task structure (additive task). Probably, supporting this irrational action may be the ethical satisfaction that the duty as a citizen supporting democracy was able to be achieved. There is also research which showed clearly that the sense of reliabilities to democracy and to others is associated with the budget deficit of the country. In order to prevent social loafing, the sense of reliability to society may be required.

Social problems and social loafing

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