It has been a fact that has been constantly discussed from past to present in the achievement of any work: Is individual success important or group success? There are many proverbs, both positive and negative, about the consequences of doing things together as “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” or “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”
The Ringellman effect or otherwise known as social slacking is a phenomenon that shows that the performance required for the work performed in the group/team structure decreases as the number of individuals increases.This phenomenon is named after the Agricultural Engineer Maximilien Ringelmann, who allowed the appearance of this effect. In a test conducted by Ringelmann in 1913, he asked a certain number of workers to play a rope pulling game with the strongest move they could pull, respectively. At first, eight people took part in the test, first one, then two, and then eight. Normally, according to popular belief, as the number of people participating in any job increases, the performance shown should also increase exponentially.
During the test, Ringelmann measured the pulling force exerted by a person while pulling the rope as 63 kg of pressure. He recorded that this pressure was 160 kg in the three-person group and 284 kg in the eight-person group. According to the unity and deterministic mathematical rules, these measurements should have been 189 for three people and 504 for eight people, respectively, but as can be seen from this strange result, which has passed to the scientific world as a phenomenon, there was a difficult picture to explain. Rope pulling was not an activity that Ringelmann chose at random. Pulling a rope group solidarity is a traditional work/game where it is thought that the power arises at the highest level according to the number and performance of individuals. Another aspect of rope pulling is that the job in question is a job that cannot be divided into separate task classes, and is shaped by the joint maximum effort of all members. In this regard, task division is not possible.
The responsibility arising from the work performed when the person is alone is more measurable, so the performance assessment can be made more clearly. Since it becomes difficult to measure an individual’s performance in groups consisting of more individuals, a tendency to slacking develops in an individual who is aware of this. An individual shows lower participation than he would normally exhibit by saying ”after all, no one notices me” or “after all, others do it for me” in places where it cannot be determined how much each individual contributes to the community individually.
There are many things that can be done to reduce the Ringellman effect. Firts of all, the sociality of individuals should be increased, that is, individuals should be supported in terms of social facilitation. The care and attention that an individual shows when he is alone, the individual shows the same work, even if it is a group activity, when others are watching him. Here it is expressed in increasing mutual control within the group. And also clarification and elaboration of goals could work as well since uncertainty of the goals is an important factor that leads to the Ringelmann effect. The uncertainty of the goals reduces the individuals to make more sacrifices. Keeping the number of group members limited and defining the goals increases the rate of effort expended by individuals.