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工作时比单独工作时付出更多努力的条件-团队中的动机增益。 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时，对团队整体产品做出不同贡献的动机收益。 理论表明，子任务之间的结构性相互依赖对促进群体动机的获得起着重要作用。 第二，它将测试是否相同的总体任务，具有相同的子任务结构，可以诱导动机增益在任务相关能力差异很大的群体成员。 在过去的研究中，发现在能力较强的成员中促进动机增益的任务类型与在能力较弱的成员中促进动机增益的任务类型有很大不同。 第三，它将测试一个重要的心理变量的独立影响，这个变量被认为是动机收益的基础：感觉不可或缺。 过去的研究还没有能够完全解开这一变量的影响，向上的社会比较，主要是由于固有的局限性，在所采用的任务。 这些目标将在四个实验室实验中完成，使用一种新的物理持久性任务，该任务由两个相互依赖的子任务组成，在难度和对小组整体成功的关键性方面都有所不同。 就更广泛的影响而言，这项研究试图从根本上改变群体中动机的主流观点，从强调动机丧失的可能性（甚至可能性）到承认真正动机获得的潜力。此外，通过使用具有子任务结构的任务，并通过同时在能力更强和能力更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可推广的动机增益如何应用于现实世界的设置，以及这种增益可以被利用来提高组织生产力和效率的可能性。

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.