Motivation Gains on Divisible Conjunctive Tasks

在这个项目中，研究小组将研究促使人们在作为团队的一部分完成任务时比单独工作时付出更多努力的条件——这是团队中的一种动力。这项研究将从三个方面扩展现有的知识。首先，它将测试当成员执行不同的子任务，对团队整体产品做出不同贡献时的动机增益。理论认为，子任务间的结构性相互依赖在促进群体动机获得中起着重要作用。第二，测试具有相同子任务结构的相同总体任务是否能诱导任务相关能力差异较大的小组成员获得动机。在过去的研究中，在能力较强的成员中发现的促进动机增加的任务类型与在能力较差的成员中发现的促进动机增加的任务类型大不相同。第三，它将测试一个关键的心理变量的独立效应，该变量被认为是动机获得的基础：感觉不可或缺。过去的研究并不能完全将这一变量的影响与向上社会比较的影响区分开来，这主要是由于所采用的任务固有的局限性。这些目标将在四个实验室实验中完成，使用一个新的物理持久性任务，该任务由两个相互依存的子任务组成，这些子任务在难度和对小组整体成功的重要性上都有所不同。就更广泛的影响而言，这项研究试图从根本上改变对群体动机的主流观点，即从强调动机丧失的可能性（甚至是可能性），到承认真正的动机获得的潜力。此外，通过使用具有子任务结构的任务，并同时在能力较强和能力较弱的小组成员中测试动机增益，本研究将更好地表明，在实验室中发现的动机增益是如何适用于现实环境的，因此这种增益可以被利用来促进组织生产力和有效性的可能性。

In this project the research team will examine the conditions that prompt people to exert more effort when working on a task as part of a group than when working alone -- a motivation gain in groups. This research will extend current knowledge in three ways. First, it will test for motivation gains when members perform different subtasks, making different contributions to the group's overall product. Theory suggests that the structural interdependence among subtasks plays an important role in promoting group motivation gains. Second, it will test whether the same overall task, with the same subtask structure, can induce motivation gains in group members who vary widely in task-relevant ability. In past research, the types of tasks found to prompt motivation gains in more-capable members have been quite different from those found to prompt motivation gains in less-capable members. Third, it will test the independent effect of a critical psychological variable presumed to underlie motivation gains: felt indispensability. Past research has not been able to fully disentangle the effect of this variable from that of upward social comparison, due mainly to limitations inherent in the tasks employed. These objectives will be accomplished in four laboratory experiments using a novel physical persistence task that is structured with two interdependent subtasks varying both in difficulty and in criticality to the group's overall success. In terms of broader impacts, this research seeks to change in a fundamental way the dominant view of motivation in groups, from one that emphasizes the possibility (even likelihood) of motivation loss, to one that acknowledges as well the potential for genuine motivation gain. Further, by using a task with a subtask structure, and by testing for motivation gains simultaneously in both more-capable and less-capable group members, this research will better indicate how generalizable motivation gains found in the laboratory are to real-world settings, and so the likelihood that such gains can be harnessed to benefit organizational productivity and effectiveness.