Last fall, research conducted by Professor Karau was the topic of a segment on the ABC News program "20/20."

Television producers profiled Karau for a segment about productivity in the workplace. His research revealed that people who work in groups tend to slack off.

Karau, along with Michael D. Michalisin, associate professor of management, and graduate assistant Abdel Elsaid, co-authored the paper entitled, "Motivation losses and gains in groups: Effects of group beliefs and task meaningfulness."

Karau presented his findings at the Annual Academy of Management Conference in Atlanta, Ga., and then his work was the subject of a "20/20" piece.

"In every workplace there is a whole range of people. There are those who are incredibly diligent and those who are less diligent, the slackers, if you will," said Michael N. Pressman, "20/20" producer in charge of the segment. "People expend different amounts of effort at work. In the United States, slackers cost employers an enormous amount of money. That's why employers are very interested in this research and so we're trying to look into that picture."

For 15 years, Karau has been studying "social loafing," which is a tendency for people to reduce their efforts when working in a group compared to when they work individually. "The theory that we focus on says that people don't work as hard if they don't see it leading to something they value as important," said Karau.

To make the point, Karau conducted experiments using SIU students while ABC News crews filmed the action. Students were asked to pull a rope by themselves and while working in groups, but some students did not know there were moles placed in the groups who were not pulling the rope. That allowed Karau to gauge if the other students were working harder when working in a group. The results supported Karau's theory.

Karau said there are some conditions under which people choose to do well on collective tasks. Individuals may actually work harder when they expect their co-workers to perform poorly on a meaningful task, an effect he refers to as "social compensation."

Karau became an observer of human behavior at an early age. "I've always been interested in how groups affect individuals in terms of social influence, conformity, motivation, and so on. As a kid, I would conduct little experiments at the shopping mall with a neighborhood friend – things like looking up and seeing how many others would stop and look up. I went on to study social psychology in graduate school," he said.

Karau is now helping companies figure out ways to keep employees motivated. To that end, he served as a consultant for health care companies in Michigan and a software company in Georgia. Karau is interested in designing groups in a way that encourages high levels of individual participation "because many people have a lot of potential to make our lives more meaningful but often their potential is wasted in groups," he said. "I just want to better understand groups and better understand how people can perform better in groups to maximize their potential."

Karau won the University Excellence Through Commitment Award in 2007, the Research Excellence Award in 2006 and Outstanding Service Honor Roll awards in 2002 and 2005.   

Karau joined the SIUC faculty in 1998. His teaching experience also includes positions at Virginia Commonwealth University, Clemson University, University of Toledo and Purdue University, from which he earned a doctorate in social psychology (1993).

Karau was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised in Phoenix, Ariz. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Arizona State University (1987) and a master’s degree in social psychology from Purdue University (1990).

When Dr. Karau is not starring on national television, he says he’s likely studying classic film noir from the 1940s and 1950s or watching high technology racing such as Formula One, Champ Car and the American Le Mans Series.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Group and team effectiveness
• Motivation within group contexts
• Leadership, gender differences in leadership, time pressure and performance
• Consumer attitudes toward e-commerce

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Michalisin, M. D., Karau, S. J., & Tangpong, C. (in press). Leadership’s activation of team cohesion as a strategic asset: An empirical simulation. Journal of Business Strategies.

Komarraju, M., & Karau, S. J. (in press). Relationships between the perceived value of instructional techniques and academic motivation. Journal of Instructional Psychology.

Komarraju, M., Karau, S. J., & Ramayah, T. (in press). Cross-cultural differences in the academic motivation of university students in Malaysia and the United States. North American Journal of Psychology.

Edwards, J. C., & Karau, S. J. (2007). Psychological contract or social contract? Development of the employment contracts scale. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 13(3), 67-78.

Michalisin, M. D., Karau, S. J., & Conrad, E. (2006). Top management team attraction as a strategic asset: A longitudinal simulation test of the resource based view. Journal of Applied Business Research, 22(3), 109-122.

Komarraju, M., & Karau, S. J. (2005). The relationship between the Big Five personality traits and academic motivation. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 557-567.

AWARDS

University Excellence Through Commitment Award, 2007

Scholar of the Year for the College of Business and Administration, 2007

Excellence Through Commitment Undergraduate Teaching Enhancement Award, SIUC, 2006

Research Excellence Award, College of Business and Administration, SIUC, 2006

Outstanding Service Honor Roll, College of Business and Administration, SIUC, 2005

Outstanding Research Honor Roll, College of Business and Administration, SIUC, 2002