Abstract

The relations among team cohesion, identifiability (i.e. the extent to which an athletes performance is made known to self and others), and individual and relay swimming performance times were investigated. Male and female collegiate swimmers competed in individual and relay events under conditions of either high or low identifiability. Measures of group cohesion were also obtained. It was hypothesized that 1) the social loafing effect, in which people exert less effort in groups than when participating alone would be observed in the low identifiability condition and that the opposite would occur in the high identifiability condition and 2) team cohesivness would be negatively related to social loafing. Results indicated that identifiability did not influence social loafing. However, team cohesion was predictive of differences between individual and group (relay) performances of females; cohesion and social loafing were negatively related. For males, no significant relation between team cohesion and social loafing was found. Verf.-Referat