When a task belongs to everyone, each person may assume someone else will carry it. A group can contain capable, willing people and still produce less effort than expected because individual contributions feel less consequential or less visible.
Social loafing experiments separated some of this motivational effect from coordination problems by changing what participants believed about the group working alongside them. The finding concerns particular conditions; it does not mean people inevitably become lazy in teams.
Low output can have several explanations
A planning committee may be waiting for a decision, missing information, or dividing work badly. Calling that social loafing would direct attention toward motivation while overlooking the actual obstacle. People may also withdraw because their suggestions are repeatedly ignored.
Making contributions identifiable can help, but excessive monitoring can replace cooperation with defensive self-presentation. A person may concentrate on visible tasks that earn credit while neglecting work that supports everyone else.
The useful distinction is whether effort has declined because participation feels dispensable, or whether effort is being lost through unclear responsibilities and blocked dependencies. A responsibility matrix can clarify who owns the work; What I Need From You makes requests between contributors explicit. A shared purpose becomes more actionable when people can see how their contribution connects to the result, without treating every collective activity as a contest for individual credit.