Mental Toughness Moderates Social Loafing in Cycle Time-Trial Performance

The purpose of this study was to determine if mental toughness moderated the occurrence of social loafing in cycle time-trial performance.

Twenty-seven men (Mage = 17.7 years, SD = 0.6) completed the Sport Mental Toughness Questionnaire prior to completing a 1-min cycling trial under 2 conditions: once with individual performance identified, and once in a group with individual performance not identified. Using a median split of the mental toughness index, participants were divided into high and low mental toughness groups. Cycling distance was compared using a 2 (trial) × 2 (high-low mental toughness) analysis of variance. We hypothesized that mentally tough participants would perform equally well under both conditions (i.e., no indication of social loafing) compared with low mentally tough participants, who would perform less well when their individual performance was not identifiable (i.e., demonstrating the anticipated social loafing effect).

The high mental toughness group demonstrated consistent performance across both conditions, while the low mental toughness group reduced their effort in the non-individually identifiable team condition.

The results confirm that (a) clearly identifying individual effort/performance is an important situational variable that may impact team performance and (b) higher perceived mental toughness has the ability to negate the tendency to loaf.