The Dilemma in Social Loafing:Pursuing Interpersonal Harmony or Achievement?

• Main Author: 陳思宇
• Other Authors: 危芷芬
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/b74rte

碩士 === 臺北市立大學 === 心理與諮商學系碩士班 === 102 === This study was aimed to explore the impact of task importance and relationships on negative emotions, interpersonal harmony strategies and effort of suckers in social loafing situations. Mediating effects of emotion and interpersonal harmony strategies between task importance, relationships and future relationships were also examined. Collective Effort Model (CEM) (Karau &; Williams, 1993) offered relating factors of social loafing. According to CEM, outcome value of group task influenced sucker’s efforts. Face and favor model (Huang, 1983) predicted that types of relationship would affect interpersonal rules. According to dynamic model of interpersonal harmony and conflict (Huang, 1999), interpersonal harmony were highly valued in Chinese culture, even if there were some unpleasantness among group members. It was inferred suckers’ efforts were both influenced by task importance and relationship. The relationships between suckers and free-riders would affect interpersonal harmony strategies of suckers. In order to understand mental health of suckers, negative emotions were added to this study to explore its mediatig effect between independent variables (relationship, task importance) and dependent variables (negative emotions, interpersonal harmony strategies, effort). Previous studies of social loafing were focused on short-term relationship, but in the real world, people often work with long-term partners. Therefore, future relationships between suckers and free-riders were also examined. The research adopted scenario questionnaire. Two independent variables were manipulated, namely task importance and relationship. Task importance was divided into two levels, department-required courses represented high importance and liberal educational curriculum as low importance. Relationships were also divided into two levels, good friends represented closer relationships and acquaintances as farther relationships. There are three dependent variables in this study, negative emotions, interpersonal harmony strategies and effort. Negative emotions included hostile and depressive emotions. And there were three types of interpersonal harmony strategy, “genuine conflict”, “superficial harmony” and “superficial conflict” strategies. Higher scores on effort subscale indicated making more efforts. The participants were 202 college students in Northern Taiwan, including 140 females and 62 males. Two kinds of statistical methods were conducted in this study. Two-way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was adopted to examine the effects of independent variables on dependent variables. Structural equation model (SEM) was used to examine the relationship among relationship, task importance, negative emotions, effort and future relationship. The results were showed as following: (1) Relationship negatively predicted hostile emotion, task importance positively predicted hostile emotion. (2) Relationships predicted interpersonal harmony strategies, “genuine conflict” strategies were more preferred as suckers and free-riders were good friend, “superficial harmony” strategies were more likely to be adopted when suckers and free-riders were acquaintance. (3) Relationship positively predicted future relationships. Friends tended to maintain future relationship more than acquaintance. And, as suckers worked harder, they would keep closer relationship with free-riders in the future. (4) Hostile emotions were partially mediated between relationships and genuine conflict strategies, relationship and superficial harmony strategies, and completely mediated between relationships and superficial conflict strategies, task importance and effort. (5) Interpersonal harmony strategies adopted by suckers predicted future relationships between suckers and free–riders. As suckers adopted more “genuine conflict” or “superficial harmony” strategies, the relationship between suckers and free–riders would be more distant in the future.