Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
A current focus of research on individual versus group performance is social loafing, the decrease inindividual effort that occurs when the individual works within a cooperative group rather than alone.Theory and research on this issue have been strongly influenced by results reported in Moede (1927)and attributed to Ringelmann. Despite the importance and frequent citation of Ringelmann's study,the location of his original report has been a mystery. In this article Ringelmann's original article isdiscussed and described in detail. Ringelmann was a French agricultural engineer who gathered hisdata in the 1880s. He (Ringelmann, 1913b) reported the performance of human workers as a functionof the method that the workers used to push or pull a load horizontally. Comparison of individualand group performance was a secondary interest in this experiment. Ringelmann interpreted theobtained decrement in group performance in terms of coordination loss, although he was also awareof motivational factors. Ringelmann's results are briefly related to contemporary theory and research.
Kravitz et al. (Thu,) studied this question.