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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report on new research that explores the effect of co‐worker friendship and performance norms on the Köhler motivation gain effect.Design/methodology/approachFemales worked at a motor persistence task with either a more capable coactor or with a more capable team‐mate (where the group's task had conjunctive task demands; i.e. the performance of the weaker team‐mate defined the group's score). The co‐workers (coactors or team‐mates) were either friends or strangers. Participants were also led to believe that their co‐workers and peers endorsed social norms prescribing either high or low level of effort at the task.FindingsCompared to comparable individual control workers, the inferior‐ability coactors showed a significant motivation gain (attributable to social‐comparison processes); this gain was not moderated by either friendship or performance norms. Inferior‐ability members of the collaborative teams worked significantly harder than the coactors (attributable to the indispensability of their efforts under these work conditions), but only when their partners were friends or the performance norms prescribed high effort.Research limitations/implicationsThe research focuses on short‐term laboratory groups of females working together for a very brief period. The applicability of the findings to more typical work teams will require further research.Practical implicationsThe research suggests that the task motivation of particular team members (namely, those with the least ability) can be increased by strengthening social ties between team‐mates and promoting high effort social norms.Originality/valueThe research adds to a growing literature that identifies when and why members of work groups will work harder than comparable individual workers.

Summary: Past investigations of performance on a conjunctive physical persistence task have yielded consistent evidence of motivation gains in the less able worker - a pattern first seen in data collected over 70 years ago ( Köhler, 1926 , 1927 ). Moreover, recent work indicates that these gains are due to the increased instrumentality of the weaker participant's efforts. The present study sought to demonstrate that another potential factor in the work context - the sex composition of the group, which is known to moderate self-presentation concerns - could also affect such motivation gains. Male and female members of work teams performed a physical persistence task. In one condition they performed work trials as individuals. In others, they first worked on the task alone and then were paired with a more capable same- or other-sexed teammate to perform the task conjunctively - i. e., this trial was over as soon as either person stopped. As expected, these less capable participants worked significantly harder under conjunctive task demands, irrespective of coworker sex. However, also as predicted, males tended to show even greater motivation gain when paired with a more capable female, while females' efforts tended to vary the most when they were paired with a male. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the potentially multifaceted bases for motivation gains in collective work contexts.

International audience ; Many scientific, educational, business, military, and political groups assume that people who solve problems in groups and teams will solve subsequent problems better as individuals than people without previous group problem-solving experience. In order to assess such group-to-individual transfer, sets of three people solved four letters-to-numbers decoding problems as groups (G) or individuals (I) in five conditions: GGGG, GGGI, GGII, GIII, or IIII. Results supported four hypotheses: (a) groups performed better than individuals, (b) positive group-to-individual transfer occurred, (c) one group experience was sufficient for transfer, (d) transfer was at the level of group performance (complete) on problems 2 and 3 but incomplete on problem 4, due to exceptional performance in the GGGG condition.

Many scientific, educational, business, military, and political groups assume that people who solve problems in groups and teams will solve subsequent problems better as individuals than people without previous group problem-solving experience. In order to assess such group-to-individual transfer, sets of three people solved four letters-to-numbers decoding problems as groups (G) or individuals (I) in five conditions: GGGG, GGGI, GGII, GIII, or IIII. Results supported four hypotheses: (a) groups performed better than individuals, (b) positive group-to-individual transfer occurred, (c) one group experience was sufficient for transfer, (d) transfer was at the level of group performance (complete) on problems 2 and 3 but incomplete on problem 4, due to exceptional performance in the GGGG condition.

The use of coactors as non-group controls in prior social compensation research has left open the possibility that the effect might artifactually have resulted from a confound between work condition (Coaction vs. Collective) and the opportunity to make performance comparisons. A direct empirical test of this alternative, artifactual explanation is reported. Its results contradict that explanation and suggest that the use of coactors as controls has, if anything, resulted in an underestimation of the magnitude of the social compensation effect. It is argued that multiple alternative non-group performance baselines can be informative for analyzing group motivation effects.

Research, starting with Köhler (1926), has demonstrated a type of group motivation gain, wherein the less capable member of a dyad working conjunctively at a persistence task works harder than comparable individuals. To explore possible boundary conditions of this effect, the current experiment systematically varied the amount and timing of performance feedback group members received. Results showed: (a) continuous feedback of both members' performance was not necessary for producing the effect; (b) the effect was attenuated, but not eliminated by delaying and restricting feedback, such that group members only learned which of them was the less capable worker (but not how long s/he persisted) sometime after the task trial was completed; and (c) the motivation gain was eliminated in the absence of any performance feedback (i.e. when neither worker could tell who quit first nor how long either had persisted). Some implications of these results for currently viable explanations of the Köhler effect are discussed. It is concluded that the effect is likely to result from several distinct processes.

Summary: Recent research on the " Köhler effect" (e. g., Hertel, Kerr, & Messé, 2000a , b ) has demonstrated that persons increase their effort when working with a stronger coworker compared to when working as individuals. One pre-condition for these motivation gains was a conjunctive task structure, suggesting that high instrumentality of the weaker worker's performance for the group outcome is crucial for the effect to occur. Two experiments were conducted to replicate and further explore these instrumentality effects using a physical persistence paradigm. Experiment 1 compared anonymous and non-anonymous teams working conjunctively to test whether collective motives (maximizing group's outcome) or individualistic interests (impression management) are more likely to underlie the Köhler motivation gain effect. Results replicated overall motivation gains and showed only slight effects of the anonymity variation, suggesting that the motivation gains are more a product of collective motives than individualistic interests. In Experiment 2, spontaneous goal setting processes were explored as a possible mediator of the Köhler motivation gain effect. Comparing conjunctive and additive task conditions for weaker group members again demonstrated that high instrumentality is crucial for the Köhler motivation gain effect. Moreover, while there was no reliable difference between these conditions in reported goal setting, simulating high instrumentality goals by explicit instruction in another additive task condition did lead to significant motivation gains.

This study examined whether increasing evaluation concerns would increase the magnitude of the Köhler effect (i.e., one type of motivation gain that has been documented to occur in small groups). Evaluation concerns were manipulated by having participants work in the physical presence or virtual presence of their coworker. As anticipated, motivation gains were significantly greater for participants who worked in the physical presence of their coworker. These results suggest that evaluation concerns can potentially increase the magnitude of the Köhler effect. Furthermore, the findings have implications for practitioners and researchers interested in the differential impact that face-to-face and virtual mediums have on motivation in groups or teams.