ABSTRACT

Although group work has the potential to both reduce and increase the effort expenditure of its members, effort losses (i.e., reduced effort in group- versus individual work) have long been perceived as (nearly) inevitable in Social Psychology. This notion was elicited, accompanied, and bolstered by (i) pessimistic theorising on group productivity, and (ii) the primary use of laboratory experiments to study effort expenditure in groups. In this contribution, we adopt a more optimistic theoretical perspective. We review a series of consecutive field and vignette studies showing that individuals often work harder in groups than alone (i.e., effort gains in groups). We show that effort gains in groups are robust and can be reliably observed under various theoretically derived conditions. We also illustrate that effort gains in groups cannot be explained by various alternative explanations, and illuminate underlying mechanisms and moderators of effort gains in groups in field settings. We conclude our review by elaborating on the relevance of our findings for current theorising, the motivating design of group work, and new directions in the study of effort expenditure during group work.

摘要

尽管小组工作有可能减少和增加其成员的努力支出，但长期以来，努力损失（即小组与个人工作的努力减少）在社会心理学中一直被认为是（几乎）不可避免的。（i）关于团队生产力的悲观理论，以及（ii）主要使用实验室实验来研究团队中的努力支出，引发、伴随和支持了这一概念。在这篇文章中，我们采用了更乐观的理论视角。我们回顾了一系列连续的现场和小插曲研究，这些研究表明个人在团体中通常比单独工作更努力（即，在团体中努力获得收益）。我们表明，群体中的努力收益是稳健的，并且可以在各种理论推导的条件下可靠地观察到。我们还说明了群体中的努力收益不能用各种替代解释来解释，并阐明了在现场环境中群体努力收益的潜在机制和调节因素。我们通过详细阐述我们的发现与当前理论、小组工作的激励设计以及小组工作中努力支出研究的新方向的相关性来结束我们的审查。