Ringelmann effect

The Ringelmann effect is the tendency for individual members of a group to become less productive as the group grows, a pattern first reported by French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann in 1913. Ringelmann found that people pulling a rope together exerted significantly less effort than when they pulled alone. The article attributes the drop to two processes: motivation loss, also called social loafing, and coordination problems. It also cites Ingham et al. (1974), whose pseudo-group studies suggested motivational losses largely drive the decline, and it describes weaver ants that show the opposite pattern, or "superefficiency."