Over the past 30 years, there has been considerable research showing that members of work groups often do not work as hard as comparable individual task performers. Such social loafing research has led some to suggest that task motivation is generally lower in groups or teams. However, in the last few years, there has been growing evidence that groups are not inherently or typically demotivating, but on the contrary, can sometimes result in increases in member task motivation. This proposal seeks to extend understanding of such group motivation gains by continuing a program of research on one such phenomenon, the Kohler effect. In seminal research with rowing teams, O. Kohler (1926) found that when the group's performance was defined by the least capable member's performance, that least capable member (the "weak link") would work particularly hard. With prior NSF support (through Grant BCS-9974664), the Kohler effect's robustness has been established, a number of its boundary conditions have been determined, and most importantly, at least two psychological processes which underlie it have been identified [1. a competitive motive to avoid being identified as the "weak link" in the group, and 2. a cooperative motive to fulfill the special responsibility that comes with being the group's weak link]. This project extends this prior work by exploring how the Kohler motivation gain may depend upon a number of distinctive group processes. In particular, it will determine how the Kohler effect specifically [and group motivation gains more generally] depends on the nature of the work group itself. Nine experiments are proposed that focus on several important features of work groups-how group members feel about their fellow group members or the group as a whole, what group members expect of one another, the relationship between the group and the authorities that judge and reward them, whether the group works alone or competes against other groups, the culture from which the group members come, and how the ingroup (and outgroup) is composed. The project's primary significance lies in its potential to illuminate basic processes of motivation in groups, and thereby to provide useful knowledge that can be applied to maximizing workforce productivity in collective work contexts (e.g., work groups and teams).
