Social Coordination 401own judgment. This is true even if the dissenting confederate
disagrees with the subject as well as the rest of the group
(Allen & Levine, 1971). The key factor is not agreement with
the subject, but rather the recognition that nonconformity is
possible and acceptable.
Other lines of research have explored the conditions under
which minority opinions not only survive, but also become
influential to varying degrees in the group. A primary con-
clusion is that minority members must marshal high-quality
arguments and come across as credible. In other words,
minorities must rely on informational influence to counter the
normative influence associated with the majority position.
Against this backdrop, research has revealed a variety of more
specific factors that foster minority influence. Thus, minori-
ties are persuasive when they hold steadily to their views
(Maass & Clark, 1984; Moscovici, Lage, & Naffrechoux,
1969), originally held the majority opinion (e.g., R. D. Clark,
1990; Levine & Ranelli, 1978), are willing to compromise a
bit (Mugny, 1982), have at least some support from others
(e.g., Asch, 1955; Tanford & Penrod, 1984; Wolf & Latané,
1985), appear to have little personal stake in the issue (Maass,
Clark, & Haberkorn, 1982), and present their views as com-
patible with the majority but just a bit ahead of the curve, so
to speak (e.g., Kiesler & Pallak, 1975; Maass et al., 1982;
Volpato, Maass, Mucchi-Faina, & Vitti, 1990). Minority in-
fluence also has a better chance if the majority wants to make
an accurate decision, because this situation gives the advan-
tage to informational over normative influence (Laughlin &
Ellis, 1986). The conditions associated with effective minor-
ity influence enable groups (and societies) to embrace new
ideas, fashions, and action preferences.
Accountability
The notion of conformity conveys an image of nameless au-
tomatons who surrender their personal identity to the group.
Ironically, however, the coordination function served by mu-
tual influence in a group setting requires rather than negates a
sense of personal identity and responsibility among group
members. To achieve social coordination, people must feel
that they are part of a larger social entity, of course, but they
also must feel that this part is uniquely their own. Two
research traditions are relevant to the role of accountability in
achieving social coordination. The first concerns the condi-
tions under which people abrogate personal responsibility for
doing their part to achieve a common goal or for taking the
initiative in a group setting in which their involvement would
be helpful. The second concerns the conditions under which
people in a sense become overlysensitized to the group goal
to the point that they lose sight of their personal identity and
unique role in the group.Social LoafingSometimes the whole is less than the sum of its parts. This
feature of group dynamics was first observed in an experi-
mental setting by Max Ringelman in the 1920s. Using a
gauge to measure effort exerted by tug-of-war participants,
Ringelman found that the collective effort was always greater
than that of any single participant, but less than the sum of all
participants (Kravitz & Martin, 1986). If two people working
alone could each pull 100 units, for example, their combined
output was only 186—not the 200 one would expect if each
pulled as hard as he or she could. Similarly, a three-person
group did not produce 300 units, but only 255, and an eight-
person group managed only 392 units—less than half the 800
possible.
Ringelman suggested that two mechanisms were responsi-
ble for this phenomenon. The first, coordination loss,reflects
difficulties individuals have in combining their efforts in a
maximally effective fashion. On a rope-pulling task, for ex-
ample, people may not synchronize their respective pulls and
pauses, and this can prevent each person from reaching his or
her full potential. The second mechanism, commonly re-
ferred to today as social loafing(Latané, 1981), refers to
diminished effort by group members. People may simply not
work as hard when they feel other people can pick up the
load. Latané, Williams, and Harkins (1979) attempted to
replicate the Ringelman effect and to determine which of his
proposed mechanisms accounted for it. Participants in one
study, for example, were simply asked to shout or clap as
loud or as hard as they could, while wearing blindfolds and
headsets that played a stream of loud noise. When tested
alone, participants averaged a rousing 9.22 dynes/cm^2 —
about as loud as a pneumatic drill or a teenager’s stereo sys-
tem. But in dyads, subjects performed at only 66% capacity,
and in six-person groups, their performance dropped to 36%
capacity. The results, in other words, revealed an inverse
relationship between the number of coperformers and the
output each one generated.
To separate the relative impact of coordination loss and
social loafing, Latané et al. (1979) tested noise production
in pseudogroups. Participants thought that either one other
participant or five other participants were cheering with
them, although they were actually cheering alone (the blind-
folds and headsets came in handy here). Because there were
not any other group members, any drop in individual produc-
tion could not be due to coordination loss, but instead would