The Moderating Influence of Personality and Culture on Social Loafing in Typical versus Maximum Performance Situations Ute-Christine Klehe and Neil Anderson University of Amsterdam, Programmagroep Arbeids-en Organisatiepsychologie and Amsterdam Business School, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands. u.klehe@uva.nl The current paper combines research from personality, cultural, social, and work- and organizational psychology. More precisely, it addresses the motivating effects of situa- tions that either foster or inhibit social loafing under typical vs maximum performance conditions. It further tests how these effects are moderated by the three individual difference variables of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience, and the two cultural dimension variables of collectivism and power distance. Results reveal positive main effects for inherently motivating situations, maximum performance conditions, conscientiousness, agreeableness and collectivism, as well as a significant interaction between the degree to which the situation invites social loafing and the typical vs maximum performance condition. These findings thus confirm a possible overlap between the theories of social loafing and of typical vs maximum performance. Finally, power distance showed a number of surprising interactions that may, in part, account for cultural differences found in the social loafing literature. Implications for theory building, empirical research and practice are discussed. 1. Introduction T he last few years have witnessed an increase in research on performers’ reactions to typical vs maximum performance situations (e.g., Kirk & Brown, 2003; Klehe & Anderson, 2005, 2007; Klehe, Anderson, & Viswesvaran, 2007). Typical performance situations represent enduring work situations in which perfor- mers are not aware of any performance evaluation or instruction to invest effort, whereas maximum perfor- mance situations describe short and evaluative situa- tions during which the instruction to invest effort is quite apparent (Sackett, Zedeck, & Fogli, 1988). Yet, numerous questions concerning the distinction have not yet been sufficiently examined, such as the potential overlap with the literature on social loafing (Karau & Williams, 1993) and the influence of personality and cultural differences on performers’ motivation in typical vs maximum performance situations. Based on an earlier argument (Klehe & Anderson, 2005), we propose that the effects of typical vs max- imum performance conditions interact with incentives toward social loafing as well as with different individual personality and cultural variables. In line with earlier work on typical vs maximum performance (Ployhart, Lim, & Chan, 2001), which, to our knowledge, has no parallel in the social loafing literature, we also examine the moderating influence of the personality factors & 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation & 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA, 02148, USA International Journal of Selection and Assessment Volume 15 Number 2 June 2007