The way in which people perform on certain tasks in groups is directly related to the difficulty of the task and also how performance is evaluated. Social facilitation and social loafing are two theories that help explain this phenomenon. Social facilitation theory is the idea that when individual performance in a group can be evaluated individuals seem to perform better then if their performance can not be determined, this usually occurs when arousal is high (lecture, 2/13/2011). This idea is said to work when the task is easy but does not enhance performance when the task is difficult (lecture, 2/13/2011). On the hand, Social loafing theory is the idea that when individual performance can not be determined in a group individuals seem to slack off and do not performance well on easy tasks but do perform well on more difficult tasks, this usually occurs when there is little arousal or high relaxation (lecture, 2/13/2011). A local business man is try to decide whether individual performance should be evaluated for the manufacturing of two parts, X and Y, in which X is extremely easy to produce and part Y is extremely difficult to produce.
If the businessman were to evaluate the performance of his employees who produce part X then the employees would probably feel the need to work faster and harder. Since part X is very easy to produce employees would not feel threatened to make a mistake and mess the part up. They would be able to produce the parts quickly and easily since it would take little thought to put the pieces together, and since they are being evaluated they would want to perform better comparatively.
If he were to not evaluate the performance of his employees who produce part X then the employees would feel no need to work fast. They would still be able to produce the parts with out mistakes since the task is easy, but not as many parts would be produced because the employees would feel no pressure to perform as well as others around them.
If he were to evaluate the performance of his employees who produce part Y then the employees would feel an urgency to work at a faster pace. Since part Y is very difficult to produce the urgency that drives the employees would probably cause them to mess up and produce faulty parts. They would