Making Groups Work Better

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Making Groups Work Better

• Sandeep Krishnamurthy
• University of Washington, Bothell
• Business Program Retreat

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Social Loafing Literature

• Classic study by Latane and colleagues (1986)-
• Subjects were told that they were part of a study
  on sensory feedback on noise production.
• Blindfolded and provided earplugs.
• Told to make as much noise as possible by
  clapping and cheering.
• One group told they were working in pairs, other
  group told they were working alone.

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Social Loafing Literature

• Results-
• Individuals who were told that they are working
  in pairs produced less noise!
• When individuals were told that their individual
  performance would be measured even when they
  worked in groups, this effect disappeared!

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Social Loafing Literature

• Defined as reduction in individual effort when
  performing a collective task.
• Robust effect that generalizes across tasks and
  subject populations.

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Social loafing reduces when..

• Task is meaningful, interdependent.
• Individuals feel they have a lot of influence on
  outcomes.
• Strong norms of reciprocity and fairness exist.
• Potential for evaluation on individual measures
  exists.

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Modeling a Group Project

• Group of n greater than or equal to 2
  individuals.
• Each individual chooses an effort level.
• Individuals utility is derived from two sources-
• Grade Higher grade leads to higher utility
• Disutility Higher effort leads to lower utility

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The Model

• Utility of individual i is given by-
• Ui wi Gi - ki Ei (1)
• where
• Gi is the grade of individual i
• Ei is the effort put in by individual i
• wi is how much joy i derives from higher
  grades
• ki reflects how much i hates to put in effort

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The Final Model

• Gi f(?iEi) where f is concave with decreasing
  returns.
• Notice your grade is determined by group effort,
  i.e., one grade for one group.
• Substituting in (1), the final model is-
• Ui wi f(?iEi) - ki Ei (2)

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Seriousness Index

• Results depend upon a seriousness index which
  is defined as- wi/ki.
• Seriousness index for individual i will be high
  if she-
• Cares a lot about high grades (i.e., high wi)
• Does not worry about working hard (i.e., low ki)
• Both

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Results

• Scenario 1- Single Serious Individual
• One person in a group has a seriousness index
  that is higher than the rest.
• Here, this person does all the work and the
  others free-ride.

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Results

• Scenario 2-Coalition of Serious Individuals
• Two to n-1 students have a seriousness index that
  is higher than the rest.
• Here, the two or more serious people form a
  coalition and do all the work. The others
  free-ride.

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Optimal Situation

• Everybody has identical seriousness index-
• Everybody puts in equal effort.
• The level of effort by a single individual will
  be less than scenario 1 or scenario 2.

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Other Results

• The difficulty of the assignment does not
  fundamentally alter the results.
• It is a moderating variable, i.e., it amplifies
  or dampens the level of the problem.

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Implications of this Model

• Dysfunctional groups are those in which there is
  lot of heterogeneity in the seriousness index,
  i.e., here, some people are serious and others
  are not.
• Groups that work well have similar (either high
  or low) seriousness index values.

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Implications of this Model

• In most groups, you can expect social loafing.
• Selection process of groups is important!!!
• I also find that increasing the level of grading
  individuals leads to greater effort.

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Questions for Discussion

• How do you think social loafing can be reduced?
• What is the best way to select groups?
• How do you design an ideal peer evaluation
  system?
• Should you grade on individual components instead
  of the overall report?
• Do you think it is time to remove the group-work
  component in your class?