Ringelmann Effect

The Ringelmann effect is the tendency for individual members of a group to become less productive as the size of the group increases. The French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann discovered the effect through research on group productivity, most notably a 1913 study in which participants pulled on a rope either alone or together with others. Ringelmann found that people working collaboratively on the rope-pulling task exerted less total effort than the sum of what the same people produced working individually, so that average individual contribution fell as group size grew, contradicting the common assumption that teamwork generates greater combined effort. Ringelmann attributed the decline in per-person output to two distinct causes: a loss of individual motivation, since a member can rely on others to supply the necessary effort, later studied in its own right as social loafing, and problems of coordination, since a team can struggle to synchronize members' actions effectively even when every member has adequate skill and is trying to contribute. The Ringelmann effect is regarded as one of the earliest documented findings in the study of group and organizational productivity.