Idle threat at work – laziness is contagious
SOME may be born lazy but researchers have discovered that idleness is also contagious.
They found that we tend to adapt to those around us, so if we are surrounded by lazy people, we will start making less effort.
The same was true of two other characteristics investigated in their study: impatience and prudence.
Researchers Marie Devaine and Jean Daunizeau said their study adds to findings that people like to follow the herd, rather than having fixed character traits.
This helps to eliminate ‘oddball’ behaviour that is out of sync with everyone else in society, the researchers say.
Although following others’ behaviour is widespread, our awareness of it is not.
In the research, only 1 per cent of people who changed their attitude were aware they had done so.
The psychologists, from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, studied 56 participants.
They were set tasks involving risks (to study prudence), effort (laziness) and delay (impatience). To measure impatience, the participants had to choose between a small payout offered in three days and a higher payout up to a year later.
For effort, they had to grip a device at between 10 and 0 per cent of their ability for either a low or high reward.
To assess prudence, they were asked to choose between winning 0 per cent of a small lottery prize, or a lower chance to get a higher payout.
The participants undertook each task several times. During the process they were told how a previous participant had guessed and their own responses were assessed.
The authors whose research is published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, write: ‘These results indicate that people become significantly more [or respectively less] impatient, lazy or prudent after having observed somebody more [or respectively less] susceptible to delay, effort or risk than themselves.
‘We found that people learn from others’ lazy, impatient or prudent behaviour. More precisely we have shown that people’s attitude drifts towards that of others.’