The impact of motive disposition on group performance

People exert less effort when performing in groups than when working alone. Based on the collective effort model’s core principle that individuals are only willing to work hard if they expect their individual contribution to be instrumental in obtaining personally satisfying outcomes, this study demonstrates the strong influence of individual motive dispositions on group performance. Motive dispositions vary from person to person and, when triggered by appropriate cues in the environment, form the current motivation and determine behavior. In experimental ad-hoc groups designed to provoke social loafing for individuals with a high need for achievement, i.e. with few opportunities for self-evaluation, team-members with a high need for achievement (N = 28) substantially reduced their effort to participate in the task at hand. Contrary, in the same situation, team-members with a high need for affiliation (N = 55) showed no social loafing at all, but social laboring instead, resulting in nearly 50% better performance in the group task compared to their team members with a high need for achievement.