“If we don’t all row, the boat won’t go.” seems ideal, right? It only makes sense that if a person gives it their all to achieve a purpose on their own, it is also expected for them to do the same within a group of people. However, that’s the thing, a person who is forced to overcome a problem on their own has the mindset that they are at disadvantage in regards to manpower, that’s why they have to push harder which ends up in them exceeding to their full potential. When this person is put into a group full of people that have to overcome the same hardship or achieve the same mission, deep down they feel relieved. This sense of relief makes their thoughts go from “Must do.” to “Can do.”. Therefore they become less productive.
Humans, since early ages, started living together as groups like tribes. They helped each other but also achieved things together. From then to now, one thing is unchanged: humans’ tendency to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases which can be simply named as “The Ringelmann Effect”.
In 1883, Ringelmann who was a French agricultural engineer and was interested in examining various aspects related to agricultural efficiency, conducted a research. He had the participants pull on a rope for 5 seconds. They pulled the rope as individuals, in groups of 2,4 and 8. The results showed that, considering the force of the individual when pulled alone is %100, became %93 with 2 people, %85 with 3 and %49 with 8 people. With this experiment, we can conclude that as the distinguishableness of a person decreases their individual effort also decline.
The reason for this is simply the mindset of “They are all giving their all anyways it won’t change anything if i slack off a bit.”Except all of them think this way. We can say that people think the effort they put into a work as an individual when they r in a group will go unnoticed therefore they just do the part that they “think” belongs to them.
To prevent this as much as possible the members of a group should be well aware of their responsibility and how big the effect of their individual effort on the big outcome. Individual targets or midpoints could also be introduced within the group, this way the person will think his act is being watched. But most importantly teamwork should be established. This way people can exceed a point of force they can never as individuals.