Indispensability effects in a sequential task: Motivation gains during anonymous cooperation on the Internet

When the whole is more than the sum of its parts: Group motivation gains in the wild

“…In accordance with other research (Au et al, 1998;Wittchen et al, 2007), these data show that indispensability perceptions increase when the number of persons decrease who might be able to compensate poor performance. In accordance with Hypothesis 2, this change in perceived indispensability with later starting position provides an important precondition for the expected motivation gains in relay teams, which we will assess as differences between swimming performance times in individual and relay heats in the main study.…”

“…In particular, working as the weaker member in a conjunctive task (i.e., the overall group performance is determined by the weakest individual performance, Steiner, 1972) has been the standard paradigm of experimental research on the indispensability effect (Weber & Hertel, 2007). However, perceptions of indispensability for the group outcome are not limited to weak group members and conjunctive tasks, but can also be triggered by the group members' position in consecutive group tasks (Au, Chen, & Komorita, 1998;Wittchen, Schlereth, & Hertel, 2007). For instance, Au et al (1998) argue that the perceived criticality of individual contributions tends to increase with the position in a sequential public goods dilemma because later group members perceive their contribution as necessary for the provision of the public good.…”

Gendered Ways to Motivation Gains in Groups

“…First of all, results show that working collectively not inevitably leads to diminished motivation. On the contrary, our study is in line with other studies demonstrating motivation gains in computer-supported environments (e.g., Hertel et al 2003Hertel et al , 2008Wittchen et al 2007) and conventional settings (e.g., Hertel et al 2000;Kerr et al 2005Kerr et al , 2007Lount et al 2000;Messé et al 2002).…”

The Köhler Group Motivation Gain: How to Motivate the ‘Weak Links’ in a Group

“…Variations of this task have been employed in many of our subsequent studies because it possesses several ideal qualities for the study of motivation in groups: (i) the task is simple and performance is monotonically related to effort so that performance can be used as indicator of task effort, (ii) there is no fixed performance ceiling so that additional effort in group trials compared to individual trials are possible, and (iii) the task poses no safety risks to participants. However, please note that there are no theoretical reasons why the Köhler effect should be limited to motor persistence tasks, and indeed, it has subsequently been replicated on a variety of other motor and cognitive tasks (Hertel, Deter, & Konradt, 2003a; Hertel, Niemeyer, & Clauss, 2008a; Lount & Phillips, 2007; Seok, 2007; Wittchen, Schlereth, & Hertel, 2007).…”