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Listen to an Academic Talk Test #058
Listen to an Academic Talk
1. What is the main topic of the talk?
A) Strategies for effective team leadership
B) A reason for reduced individual effort in groups
C) The history of agricultural experiments
D) How to measure physical strength
2. According to the talk, what did Max Ringelmann's experiment show?
A) People pull harder when they are in a group.
B) Group performance is better than individual work.
C) Individuals exert less force in a group setting.
D) Teamwork increases individual accountability.
3. What can be inferred about a group project where individual roles are not clear?
A) It is likely to be completed ahead of schedule.
B) It may suffer from the effects of social loafing.
C) It will encourage all members to work harder.
D) It is the most effective way to assign tasks.
4. Why does the professor mention the rope-pulling experiment?
A) To introduce the concept of social loafing
B) To show a limitation of a popular theory
C) To argue that group work is always inefficient
D) To explain the idea of diffusion of responsibility
Professor: Let's discuss a concept called social loafing. This is the tendency for individuals to exert less effort on a task when they are working in a group versus when they are working alone.
This phenomenon was first identified in the early 1900s by a French engineer named Max Ringelmann. He conducted a simple experiment where he had men pull on a rope. He found that the collective force of the group was less than the sum of the individual forces if each person had pulled alone.
Why does this happen? A primary reason is the diffusion of responsibility. When you're in a group, it's easy to feel that your individual contribution doesn't matter as much, or that someone else will pick up the slack. To counteract this, making individual contributions identifiable and valued is crucial for maintaining productivity in team settings.
This phenomenon was first identified in the early 1900s by a French engineer named Max Ringelmann. He conducted a simple experiment where he had men pull on a rope. He found that the collective force of the group was less than the sum of the individual forces if each person had pulled alone.
Why does this happen? A primary reason is the diffusion of responsibility. When you're in a group, it's easy to feel that your individual contribution doesn't matter as much, or that someone else will pick up the slack. To counteract this, making individual contributions identifiable and valued is crucial for maintaining productivity in team settings.
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