individualistic, American culture - This hypothesis was proposed by Christopher P. Earley. Social loafing is when a person puts less effort when working in a group than when working alone. Earley' s studies found that people from individualistic cultures had lesser tendencies to work to their potential in group activities and were more prone to social loafing. This was in contrast to collectivist cultures like Chinese. People of the Chinese culture were found to be better performers at group activities.