The Ringelmann effect describes the tendency for individuals within a group to become less productive as the group size increases.
Understanding the Ringelmann effect
The Ringelmann effect, also known as social loafing, was first identified by French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann.
To determine how agricultural workers could maximize their productivity, Ringelmann conducted a series of now landmark experiments.
In one experiment, he measured the pulling power of a group of individuals with a pressure gauge mounted to a rope.
Ringelmann discovered that as more people were added to pull the rope, the more each individual would perform below their potential.
If two people could pull 200 units independently, they could only pull 186 units together. Worse still, teams of eight with a combined pulling power of 800 units could only manage a miserly 392 units.
In explaining his results, Ringelmann noted two contributing factors:
Motivation decreased when more people shared responsibility for a task
He explained in his research that this was due to each man “trusting his neighbour to furnish the desired effort.”
Inefficiencies increased due to a lack of task and effort coordinating among individuals
This is commonly seen in sports where a coordinated champion team performs better than an uncoordinated team of champions.
Further causes of the Ringelmann effect
Many have researched the causes of the Ringelmann effect in more detail since it was first described in the early part of the 20th century.
Two other causes are explained below.
Co-worker performance expectations
Research in the 1980s and 1990s found expectations of co-worker performance can also explain the Ringelmann effect.
Social loafing was found to be common in groups consisting of high achievers since individuals saw an opportunity to become lazy and let others do the work.
When the group was comprised of low-achieving individuals, however, the reverse was found to be true.
The phenomenon where an individual increases their output to compensate for the lower output of others is known as the social compensation hypothesis.
Evaluation potential
The Ringelmann effect is also caused by evaluation potential, or a lack thereof.
Essentially, the reduction in output for collective tasks occurs because people can avoid being evaluated in isolation as part of a group.
When allowed to hide in the crowd, as it were, people are prone to reducing their effort.
How can the Ringelmann effect be avoided?
At Amazon, Jeff Bezos’s “Large Pizza Rule” says that no team should be so large that it cannot be fed by a large pizza.
With that said, there are also some more formal ways the Ringelmann effect can be avoided:
Social capital
While easier said than done, businesses can increase team collaboration by creating a workplace culture where trust, shared values, and mutual understanding are prioritized.
Recruiting employees who interact well with others is also important.
Task designation
When employee names are designated to specific project tasks, individual and thus team performance improves.
This strategy takes advantage of evaluation apprehension, a phenomenon where people are preoccupied with how others perceive them and act to avoid judgement.
Recognize contributions
Positive reinforcement can also be an effective strategy in combating the Ringelmann effect.
Individuals should be acknowledged or even celebrated for their contributions, preferably in a public context.
Key takeaways
The Ringelmann effect describes the tendency for individuals within a group to become less productive as the group size increases.
The Ringelmann effect is primarily driven by two factors. The first is a decrease in motivation that occurs when more people share responsibility for a task. The second is inefficiencies that result due to a lack of task coordination.
The Ringelmann effect can be mitigated by creating a company culture where teamwork is prioritized, designating specific tasks to individuals, and celebrating their contributions to the group.
Convergent thinking occurs when the solution to a problem can be found by applying established rules and logical reasoning. Whereas divergent thinking is an unstructured problem-solving method where participants are encouraged to develop many innovative ideas or solutions to a given problem. Where convergent thinking might work for larger, mature organizations where divergent thinking is more suited for startups and innovative companies.
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.
Maslow’s Hammer, otherwise known as the law of the instrument or the Einstellung effect, is a cognitive bias causing an over-reliance on a familiar tool. This can be expressed as the tendency to overuse a known tool (perhaps a hammer) to solve issues that might require a different tool. This problem is persistent in the business world where perhaps known tools or frameworks might be used in the wrong context (like business plans used as planning tools instead of only investors’ pitches).
The Peter Principle was first described by Canadian sociologist Lawrence J. Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that people are continually promoted within an organization until they reach their level of incompetence.
The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.
The Streisand Effect is a paradoxical phenomenon where the act of suppressing information to reduce visibility causes it to become more visible. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress aerial photographs of her Californian home by suing photographer Kenneth Adelman for an invasion of privacy. Adelman, who Streisand assumed was paparazzi, was instead taking photographs to document and study coastal erosion. In her quest for more privacy, Streisand’s efforts had the opposite effect.
As highlighted by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer in the paper “Heuristic Decision Making,” the term heuristic is of Greek origin, meaning “serving to find out or discover.” More precisely, a heuristic is a fast and accurate way to make decisions in the real world, which is driven by uncertainty.
The recognition heuristic is a psychological model of judgment and decision making. It is part of a suite of simple and economical heuristics proposed by psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer. The recognition heuristic argues that inferences are made about an object based on whether it is recognized or not.
The representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The representativeness heuristic judges the probability of an event according to the degree to which that event resembles a broader class. When queried, most will choose the first option because the description of John matches the stereotype we may hold for an archaeologist.
The take-the-best heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that helps an individual choose between several alternatives. The take-the-best (TTB) heuristic decides between two or more alternatives based on a single good attribute, otherwise known as a cue. In the process, less desirable attributes are ignored.
The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.
The bundling bias is a cognitive bias in e-commerce where a consumer tends not to use all of the products bought as a group, or bundle. Bundling occurs when individual products or services are sold together as a bundle. Common examples are tickets and experiences. The bundling bias dictates that consumers are less likely to use each item in the bundle. This means that the value of the bundle and indeed the value of each item in the bundle is decreased.
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals believe that generic information – which applies to most people – is specifically tailored for themselves.
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
