Team Spirit or Individual Responsibility?
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A common stereotype about groups is that the sense of team spirit spurs individual effort and enhances the group's overall productivity. However, the phenomenon known as "social loafing" directly challenges this logic that the productivity of the group as a whole should at least equal the sum of the productivity of all the individuals in that group. Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually.

In the late 1920s, a German psychologist named Ringelmann compared the results of individual and group performance on a rope-pulling task. He expected that the group's effort would be equal to the sum of the efforts of individuals within the group. That is, three people pulling together should exert three times as much pull on the rope as one person, and eight people should exert eight times as much pull.

Ringelmann's results, however, did not confirm his expectations. Groups of three people exerted a force only two-and-a-half times the average individual performance. Groups of eight collectively achieved less than four times the solo rate. As you added more and more people to a group pulling on a rope, the total force exerted by the group rose, but the average force exerted by each group member declined.

Replications of Ringelmann's research with similar tasks have supported his findings. Increases in group size are inversely related to individual performance. More people may be better in the sense that the total productivity of a group of four is greater than that of one or two people, but the individual productivity of each group member declines.

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