The psychology of scaling community

As community professionals, we spend most of our time dealing with psycho-social challenges. We need to be familiar with some phrases that affect group dynamics. Let’s discuss ‘diffusion of responsibility’ and ‘social loafing’, and understand how they affect communities.

Let’s set the scene. You started a new community; maybe it’s a forum, a community action group, or a local book club. At first, everything’s buzzing. People are joining, someone actually turns up to your first event, and you’re riding that early wave, convinced you’ve cracked the code on belonging and participation.

Fast forward a few months. The numbers have gone up, but so has the noise. More people, more ideas, more needs; brilliant! But also, more WhatsApp messages at 11pm about vegan snacks for the next meetup, more “just checking in” emails, and (my personal favourite) more people who seem to have merged into the background, like they’re part of the wallpaper.

Here’s the thing, with more people comes more places to hide. A bit like being at a family wedding; if there’s only six of you, you’ll be roped into clearing up the buffet. If there are sixty, you can safely disappear behind an aunt’s hat and hope no one notices you slinking off early.

Diffusion of Responsibility: The Invisible Handbrake

This is where psychology kicks in. The phenomenon at play here is called diffusion of responsibility. In the 1960’s social psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané showed that the more people are present, the less likely any one person is to take action; because everyone assumes someone else will step up. This is the engine behind the bystander effect, which entered public consciousness after the tragic murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. Kitty was attacked in a New York street; many witnesses saw or heard her suffering, but no one intervened or called for help. Each bystander assumed someone else would act, and so, heartbreakingly, no one did. It’s an extreme, but powerful, example of how diffusion of responsibility can disorientate a group, even in moments of crisis.

But this isn’t limited to emergencies. Diffusion of responsibility creeps into everyday group life: work projects, online forums, and yes, your growing community. It’s why that Google Doc sits unedited, or why the same handful of people always end up running the show.

Social Loafing: The Quiet Drift

Closely linked to diffusion of responsibility is social loafing, a term describing how people put in less effort when working in a group than when working alone. The classic Ringelmann tug-of-war experiment found that as more people joined a team, each person pulled less hard on the rope. Why? Because when responsibility is shared, individual accountability fades into the background. Social loafing is not just laziness, it’s a psychological side effect of group dynamics; especially when roles are unclear, contributions aren’t tracked, or people feel anonymous in a crowd.

Research by Karau and Williams shows that social loafing intensifies as group size increases and individual efforts become less visible or appreciated. The result? Lower productivity, reduced engagement, and a heavier burden on your most committed members. In online communities, this effect can be even more pronounced, as computer-mediated communication often reduces group cohesion and the social cues that keep us accountable.

The Cast of Characters in Every Community

Communities aren’t just a sea of identical faces. They’re made up of different types of members, each with their own rhythm of participation:

Core Team: The organisers, facilitators, and leaders. They steer the community’s direction, set the tone, and take responsibility for logistics, strategy, and culture.

Key Contributors: The folks who show up early, stay late, and bring snacks. They drive discussions, generate ideas, and inspire others. Not always in formal leadership, but always visible and reliable.

Active Participants: The regulars. They consistently attend meetings, join in discussions, and help sustain momentum. The backbone of participation, even if they’re not steering the ship.

Peripheral Participants: The “sometimes” crowd. They dip in and out, occasionally contribute, and might be testing the waters or juggling other commitments. Their engagement is sporadic, but always welcome.

Observers/Lurkers: The silent majority. They attend events or read discussions but rarely, if ever, contribute. You might not notice them, but they’re there—soaking up the community’s energy and learning quietly.

Diffusion of responsibility and social loafing are strongest among the peripheral participants and observers. The more people in the room, the easier it is to assume someone else will ask the awkward question or volunteer for the unglamorous task. The psychological effect is subtle but powerful: “Why me, when there are so many others?”

This is normal, almost to be expected, but also very annoying.

Communities are living things. People come and go. Your top contributor gets a new job, someone else has a baby, another just needs a break. That core team and those key contributors? You’ll need to keep topping them up, like the biscuit tin at a busy office.

What’s a Community Wrangler to Do?

You can’t eliminate diffusion of responsibility or social loafing, but you can design around them. Here’s what’s worked for me (and what I wish I’d done sooner):

1] Make the Unspoken, Spoken: Spell out roles. Don’t assume people know what’s needed—ask, invite, nudge. “Could you help with X?” works better than “Any volunteers?”

2] Set Expectations, Gently: Let people know it’s okay to dip in and out. Life happens. But also: here’s what helps the community thrive.

3] Shine a Light on Contributions: Celebrate the helpers, the question-askers, the “I’ll tidy up the Miro board” types. Recognition is rocket fuel.

4] Share Ownership, Not Just Tasks: Invite people to shape what the community is, not just what it does. Co-design, don’t just delegate.

5] Stay Human: Be kind about churn. People will leave and return. No hard feelings, just keep the door open.

6] Make It Easy to Step Up (or Back): Design for hop-on, hop-off participation. No guilt trips, just a gentle “we missed you” when someone returns.

The Takeaway

Scaling a community isn’t about keeping everyone equally busy, it’s about making it safe and easy for people to step forward, and just as safe to step back. Diffusion of responsibility and social loafing aren’t bugs, they’re features of groups. Your job? Notice them, name them, and keep inviting people to the table.

And if all else fails, never underestimate the power of a well-timed biscuit. 🍪

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References:

Karau, S. J., & Williams, K. D. (1993). Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 681–706.

Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10(3), 215–221.

McKinlay, A., Procter, R., & Dunnet, A. (1999). An investigation of social loafing and social compensation in computer-supported cooperative work. In Proceedings of Group’99, the International Conference on Supporting Group Work , 249–257. Association for Computing Machinery.

Nonnecke, B., & Preece, J. (2000). Lurker demographics: Counting the silent. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 73–80.

Ringelmann, M. (1913). Research on animate sources of power: The work of man. Annales de l’Institut National Agronomique, 2e série, t. XII, 1–40.

N.B. Post edited (2.30pm, 21/05/2025) to highlight how some of the reporting was exaggerated. Hat tip to Clare McCarthy & Mia Allers for pointing this out.

The bystander effect has been strongly corroborated by many studies, some of which came about because of the Kitty Genovese case. You can read a brief literature review here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363028550_A_Literature_Review_of_Diffusion_of_Responsibility_Phenomenon

Liu, D., Liu, X., Wu, S. (2022) A Literature Review of Diffusion of Responsibility
Phenomenon, In Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 664, 1807-1810