This document discusses Ringelmann's experiments on group productivity and social loafing. Ringelmann discovered that individual effort decreases as group size increases, known as the Ringelmann effect. In his rope pulling experiments, individuals exerted less force when pulling in groups compared to alone. Reasons for reduced effort in groups include free-riding, coordination problems, and social loafing where individuals feel their contributions will not be identifiable. Ways to reduce social loafing include making contributions identifiable, minimizing free-riding, setting goals, and increasing involvement. Later experiments by Latane and Ingham confirmed social loafing effects even when individuals could not see or interact with each other.

1. Ringelmann’s Effects
MIHERTAB ERMIAS
Quality Team Learning (QTL)
QI and CG Unit
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2. Objectives
▪ About Ringelmann's effects
▪ Ringelmann’s and related experiments
▪ Social loafing
▪ Applying concepts
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3. Ringelmann Effect
▪ Is the tendency for individual members of a group to become
increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases.
▪ Illustrates the inverse relationship that exists between group size and
magnitude of group member’s individual contribution to the
completion of a task.
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4. Maximilien Ringelmann
▪ A French agricultural Engineer ( 1861-1931)
▪ Discovered the Ringelmann effect using the rope pulling
experiment.
▪ Discovered that as more and more people are added to a
group, the group increasingly becomes inefficient.
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5. Ringelmann's rope pulling experiment
▪ He made people pull on ropes both separately and in groups 7 and 14
and measured and compared how hard they pulled.
▪ Maximum pulling effort was recorded via a dynamometer
▪ Mean force exerted
▪ 85.3 kg per person when pulled alone.
▪ 65.0 kg per person when pulled in 7-person group.
▪ 61.4 kg per person when pulled in 14-person group.
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6. Ringelmann’s rope pulling experiment result
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7. Reasons for Ringelmann Effects
▪ Loss of motivation or social loafing
▪ Free-rider effect: as group size increases, individuals feel that other group
members will be able to accomplish the task
▪ The sucker effect: the perception that other group members are not putting
forth their best efforts. Individual reduce efforts, not to appear as a sucker.
▪ Coordination problems
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8. Social Loafing
▪ Is the reduction of exerted individual effort observed when people
work in a group compared when they work alone.
▪ Seen as main reason that groups are sometimes less productive than
the combined performance of members working as individuals.
▪ Is a feedback problem.
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9. Social Loafing
▪ Individual members’ feeling that their efforts will not matter to the
group.
▪ Lack of understanding of individual contributions.
▪ Unchallenging tasks given to the individuals
▪ Low personal satisfaction from the task
▪ Lack of a united group.
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10. Reducing social loafing
▪ Increase identifiability: When people feel their output is identifiable
or subject to evaluation, they are motivated to exert greater efforts.
▪ Minimize free-riding: Increase the perceived important of members
and members should feel they are an indispensable asset to the
group.
▪ Set goals: Setting clear and challenging goals increase commitment to
the group. Reduce the size of the group.
▪ Increase involvement: turn a task into a friendly competition or
attach with rewards or punishment.
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11. Bibb Latane’s experiment
▪ Participants wearing blindfolds and noise-masking
headphones
▪ Had to shout as loud as they could.
▪ Every one made less noise in groups compared to when they
shouted alone.
▪ The total sound produced was louder but did not grow in
proportion with the group size.
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12. Alan Ingham’s experiment
▪ Rope pulling with blindfolded participants.
▪ Participants were pulling the rope in their own, but told they are
pulling alone or as part of a group.
▪ Participants who thought they were part of the group exerted 20%
less effort than those who thought they were pulling alone.
▪ Illustrated problem of social loafing-team members reduce their
efforts when they feel less responsible for the output.
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13. Quantifying social loafing
▪ Derek De Solla Price
▪ Roughly the square root of the number of people in an organization
are responsible for 50% of the work.
▪ As the groups get larger, exponentially less people do half of the
work.
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14. Quantifying social loafing-cont.
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15. Loss of coordination
▪ Individuals performance in a group depends on
▪ Their individual resources
▪ Various interpersonal processes at work with in the group.
▪ Coordination problems are a function of the demands of the tasks
▪ Groups performance relies on members abilities to coordinate
▪ Task is unitary
▪ Requires output maximization to be successful
▪ Requires interdependence among members
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16. Limitations
▪ Do not account for task variety
▪ Do not account for some people being more skilled at managing
larger teams.
▪ If all other things being equal, smaller teams are generally better.
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17. Hackman
▪ Late Harvard psychologist
▪ “Big teams usually wind up just wasting everybody’s time”
▪ Most important is the links between them that accumulates when
group size increases not the number of people.
▪ Coordination cost proliferates with every new addition.
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18. Overcoming Ringelmann effect
▪ Establish ideal team size:
▪ Intentionally monitor team size:
▪ Keep them motivated
▪ Right communication tools
▪ Radically transparent
▪ Give frequent feedback to each other.
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19. Applying Concepts
▪ Ideal team size
▪ Committees, QI teams, project teams.
▪ Ideal team members
▪ Staffs involvement
▪ Motivate team members
▪ Clear objectives and goals for each team
▪ Develop feedback and monitoring platform
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20. Teams in our hospital
▪ Committees and other teams
▪ Most contain more than 10 members
▪ Performance
▪ None or limited on few members or heads only.
▪ Members are busy in other activities.
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21. References
▪ https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/group/ringelmann-effect/
▪ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringelmann_effect
▪ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_loafing
▪ https://www.teamstrength.net/the-ringelmann-effect-social-loafing/
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