Three Cartoon Ants working organized in order to carry three leafs to the ant nest vector illustration.

Analysing Situations

The Ringelmann effect and the idea that everyone needs to contribute for a system to work are both applicable in a plethora of situations. It can be seen in a multitude of environments that once somewhere gets crowded, control is more easily lost over that crowd of people and also those people amongst themselves. However, it can also be seen that to achieve great things and complete enormous projects many hands are needed to play a part.

If we were to take a look at the example of a classroom, the Ringelann effect might be seen more predominantly. The more students there are in the classroom, the harder it is to make sure everyone has grasped the topic and is able to be vocal about it in the lesson. But, if we were to talk about making a machine and presenting it to the public for use, there would be many more people required to make sure everything goes smoothly and that everything is in place for customers. However, when we look at it from afar, these situations are very different. So, taking the differences in the two situations mentioned into account, a conclusion might be made that the Ringelmann effect and the proverb “if we don’t all row, the boat won’t go,” can be applied to their own respective scenarios. Thus, we might be able to say that they cannot both be applied to the same scenario. Whilst the Ringelmann effect is a bit more all encompassing in that it can be seen in a much wider variety of environments, the proverb “if we don’t all row, the boat won’t go,” is a bit more specific. Going back to the examples of the classroom and the machine, we can see that the Ringelmann effect can be applied to both situations; in the classroom, it’s hard to keep track of all the students, and while making the machine, it’s hard to know what so many people are all working on at the same time. However, with the proverb, if we apply this to the classroom, it doesn’t take all the students contributing to the class to make it go on. But for working on the machine, it takes everyone to manufacture and present to the public.

Overall, I think that although the Ringelmann effect and the proverb saying “if we don’t all row, the boat won’t go,” seem very similar, they can’t always both be used on the same situation, and that the specific scenario must be considered before being able to make a conclusion.

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