Social Offloading: A Collaborative Mindset Can Reduce Interference from Visual Distractors

When humans team up, both costs and benefits on individual performances have been reported. The interference account proposes costs for teaming up due to distraction from our main task which are related to our teammates. The offloading account proposes benefits for teaming up due to distribution of labor between team members. Presently, our understanding of when to expect interference and when to expect offloading is limited. In the present work, we asked dyadic teams to engage in a joint attention task that has been used in prior work to investigate whether the interference or the offloading account is supported. A better understanding of when to expect improved and when diminished performance in joint attention situations is desirable and could guide future efforts of designing collaborative work scenarios, for example for TSA and FAA protocols.