Individual effort decreases as group size increases.
The familiar figures reach modern psychology through Moede's 1927 summary of Ringelmann's rope-pulling work around 1913, in which eight men pulled at less than half the sum of their individual efforts; later investigators could not locate fuller documentation of the original study. Coordination loss and motivation loss both contribute, and the second is social loafing.
In practice
- Two people carrying a table manage close to twice one person's effort; six carrying a beam manage nothing like six times.
- A committee of twelve produces less than a working group of four, and every member reports having been fully engaged.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind