Stephen Harkins
Stephen G. Harkins is a psychologist listed at Northeastern University on the 1985 paper The role of evaluation in eliminating social loafing, which he wrote with Jeffrey M. Jackson. He is also a co-author of the 1981 paper Identifiability as a deterrent to social loafing: Two cheering experiments.
Who they are
Stephen G. Harkins appears as first author, with a Northeastern University affiliation, on the 1985 paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. His co-author on that paper, Jeffrey M. Jackson, is listed at Fordham University. The research concerns social loafing, the tendency for individual effort to fall when work is pooled into a group result.
Key papers
The role of evaluation in eliminating social loafing (1985), with Jeffrey M. Jackson, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 11(4), 457-465. The paper reports a brainstorming experiment in four-person groups.
Identifiability as a deterrent to social loafing: Two cheering experiments (1981), with Kipling Williams and Bibb Latane, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 303-311.
Key ideas
The 1985 paper proposed that eliminating social loafing requires two conditions together: individually identifiable output, and the possibility of evaluating that output by comparison with co-workers. In the experiment, identifiable outputs produced more ideas than pooled outputs when participants believed they could be evaluated against others, and made no difference when outputs could not be compared. The idea is described on this site under identifiability.
Sources
- Harkins, S. G., & Jackson, J. M. (1985), The role of evaluation in eliminating social loafing, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 11(4), 457-465. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167285114011
- Williams, K., Harkins, S. G., & Latane, B. (1981), Identifiability as a deterrant to social loafing: Two cheering experiments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 303-311. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.40.2.303