Host for the party: Experiences of social loafing's host in the university

• Main Authors: Aquino, Janna Preciosa B., Marban, Ma. Elizabeth C., Wang, Abigail Joy A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Lingering; Time management; Group facilitation; Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/11528
• Institution: De La Salle University

The main focus of the study is directed towards the experiences, attributions, and coping mechanisms of the hosts of social loafing. Host is the coined term used in the study to refer to people who do most of the work, with little or no help from members, in group activities. Purposive sampling and chain referral method was used to gather 11 participants who have experienced being a host in social loafing. In-depth interviews were employed to obtain data which were then subjected to content analysis that generated themes that attempts to illustrate the experiences of the hosts. Results of content analysis reveal that a host's general outline of experience is composed of 6 processes, which are as follows: the presence or absence of a leader, standing up as a leader, taking responsibility, lack of progress and initiative, becoming the host, experiencing the consequences. Emotional experiences hosts have towards the loafers were found to contain feelings of annoyance, anger, concern, and pity. Attributions made by the respondents attempt to explain the experiences, and are classified according to Seligman's Explanatory Style (1984). They show that the host's characteristics, the situation, and the people they work with, influence the prevalence of social loafing. Attributions are found to be interrelated, in such a way that it is not enough to use one dimension to explain social loafing one would need to consider the other dimensions, in order to provide a broader understanding of situations. These would then determine the coping mechanism a host uses, which would affect his/her experiences.