Maximilien Ringelmann (1861–1931) was professor of agricultural engineering at the National Institute of Agronomy of France.

Under the name "Ringelmann effect" is a well-known trend, according to which there is an inverse relationship between the number of people in a group and the productivity of the group.

Let's see what it's all about.

In 1913, Ringelmann discovered that when members of a group worked together on a task, it actually resulted in significantly less effort on their part than when individual members acted alone.

Logic says just the opposite: if one person can lift - conditionally - 100 kg, then two people should lift together either 200 or even more.

After all, the expectation that group work allows more to be achieved, that its result exceeds the sum of the individual results of the group members, is quite normal. And it still exists, and is actively supported.

But, alas!

In Ringelman's experiment, two people managed to lift only 93% of the sum of their individual indicators. And 8 people only 49%...

Ringelmann verifies this result through other tasks as well. For example – tug of rope.

And again – the same result. The more the size of the group increases, the more the performance drops.

The reason is clear.

When you rely on yourself, you give your best effort.

And in the group you can save strength: no one will notice…

As in the story about the inhabitants of a village who decided to fill a barrel with vodka on the occasion of a big holiday.

From each yard - a bucket. In the end, it turned out that the barrel was full of clean water: everyone brought a bucket of water, hoping that in the total amount of vodka, their trick would not be noticed.

Motivational losses immediately occur in the group - the tendency to transfer the performance of the work from one participant to another participant because it is impossible to determine the contribution of individual participants in a group, and because usually no one wants to take on the maximum amount of work and thus allow others to flounder.

This phenomenon is also known as "Social Laziness".

No amount of social engineering has yet succeeded in overcoming the Ringelmann effect.

You can cast as many "teamwork guru" spells as you want, but the larger the group, the greater the passivity inherent in the person.

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A.A

Stob, Bulgaria