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Social loafing and social facilitation are stable behavioral effects that describe increased or decreased motivation, as well as effort and cooperation in teamwork as opposed to individual working situations. Recent twin studies demonstrate the heritability of cooperative behavior. Brain imaging studies have shown that reciprocity, cooperativeness, and social rewards activate reward processing areas with strong dopaminergic input, such as the ventral striatum. Thus, candidate genes for social behavior are hypothesized to affect dopaminergic neurotransmission. In the present study, we investigated the dopaminergic genetic contribution to social cooperation, especially to social loafing and social facilitation. N = 106 healthy, Caucasian subjects participated in the study and were genotyped for three polymorphisms relevant to the dopaminergic system (COMTval158met, DRD2 c957t, DRD2 rs#2283265). In addition to a main effect indicating an increased performance in teamwork situations, we found a significant interaction between a haplotype block covering both DRD2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (rs#6277 and rs#2283265), henceforth referred to as the DRD2-haplotype block, and the COMT val158met polymorphism (rs#4680) with social facilitation. Carriers of the DRD2 CT-haplotype block and at least one Val-allele showed a greater increase in performance in teamwork settings when compared with carriers of the CT-haplotype block and the Met/Met-genotype. Our results suggest that epistasis between COMTval158met and the two DRD2 SNPs contributes to individual differences in cooperativeness in teamwork settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moreland eloquently argues for excluding dyads from group process research and theory. Although dyads can have properties that do not lend themselves to certain group process research (e.g., coalition formation) and have properties that can go beyond typical group processes (e.g., intimate relations and love), in most instances dyads are groups of two and operate under the same principles and theories that explain group processes for groups of three and larger. In this article, the author presents research and theory that support the inclusion of dyads as groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A synthesis is proposed such that social loafing, social facilitation, and deindividuation are viewed as different ways of arranging social consequences. The effects of such arrangements have been measured in past research through productive output (social loafing and social facilitation) or through anti normative behaviors (deindividuation). All three effects are manipulable by changing individual identifiability, evaluation, social identity, task difficulty, and presence in a group. In general, when people are in groups then there is less individual visibility and therefore fewer negative social consequences individually for reducing output or for increasing socially unacceptable behaviors, even if outputs are not explicitly pooled (traditional social loafing). Whereas social loafing and social facilitation have been empirically linked in past experiments, social loafing and deindividuation have not. An experiment was therefore conducted in which participants worked on a brainstorming task alone or in a group, and with or without individual identifiability. Effects of both a modified social loafing paradigm (reduced output in groups) and a deindividuation paradigm (more socially unacceptable responses in groups) were found simultaneously for the first time. Combined with other good evidence linking social loafing and social facilitation, this supports the idea that the three topics are not separate phenomena but different arrangements of social consequence variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]