Opposite sides of the same coin? Effort gains and effort losses in teams

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Joachim Hüffmeier
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 389340199

This research project builds on the observation that the research streams on effort losses and effort gains in teams tend to currently exist largely isolated from each other. Therefore, a theoretical and empirical integration of these two research streams is pursued in this project. As the project's overarching hypothesis it is assumed on the one hand, that the boundary conditions are conceptually closely related under which effort losses and effort gains in teams emerge (e.g, social indispensability and social dispensability of the own contribution to the team's performance). On the other hand, the project is aimed at testing the hypothesis that members expend their efforts during teamwork in different modes: Effort losses in teams rely on automatic processes, whereas effort gains rely on controlled processes ("different processes hypothesis"). The simultaneous investigation of effort losses and effort gains in teams within this research project is theoretically meaningful because it can contribute to the theoretical integration of the two research streams and because it also fathoms the limits of this integation. The integration is also meaningful from an applied perspective: Reliable recommendations on the motivating design of teamwork can only be given if the specific boundary conditions and processes are clearly understood, which are responsible for the emergence of effort losses and effort gains in teams. The aspired goals of this research project are pursued by means of a meta-analysis and four empirical primary studies. In these primary studies, different, but complementary methods will be used to test the different processes hypothesis. Together, these studies allow for a reliable assessment of the validity of this project's hypotheses.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants