Why We All Hate Group Projects

I was recently introduced to this idea in my Psychology lecture, where my Social Psychology lecturer explained to us different group phenomena that could encourage or discourage collaboration. Of course, as a Psychology enthusiast, I have noticed many of the concepts raised in the people I’ve met in my life. The theories merely legitimised my past observations and opinions. However, the concept of social loafing particularly stuck with me. And I believe it was because it was one of those theories that I’d never thought of before, and after thinking about it realised it applied greatly to me.

When working in group projects, do you ever feel like you are not doing enough, but you don’t want to do more because you don’t want to seem like you are doing the most? Because that is exactly me. There has always been this inherent fear of doing more than the rest, and yet I never truly noticed it until this lecture. I realised that this fear stems from multiple aspects: the innate fear of unfairness for doing more than others; the fear of doing more and thus being the ‘natural’ leader of the group; the fear of doing more and thus seeming like the “tryhard”. These feelings are exacerbated when we cannot clearly see what other groupmates are doing, especially when working behind a screen. And thus we pay special attention to not doing “too much”, and the whole effort of the group gradually declines. We then think to ourselves: This project would have been done so much better if I had just done it alone.

This is known as the Ringelmann Effect, also known as social loafing, where we exert less effort in a group task than when working alone, often due to perceived reduced accountability and shared responsibility. The biggest problem with such a phenomenon is that most of us are not aware of it due to the subconscious nature of this behaviour. The thing is, group work can never be completely fair; there is no true equal delegation of work in any group setting. However, what helped my mindset shift was the realisation that ultimately, the result of the collaboration is borne by every member of the group, including me. I would much rather put in my best effort and submit my best work than shirk responsibility and submit subpar work and then regret it.

Of course, there needs to be a balance between shirking responsibility and completely micromanaging every project. For a period of time, I found myself trying to gain full control of every project I was in to obtain the “best” results, only to find myself constantly exhausted and burnt out. Sometimes, the collaboration between individuals is what makes the project come together, but just remember to catch yourself whenever you find yourself questioning how much work others are doing and whether you should match the rest. For your objective should not be to match the level of effort of others, but match your own capabilities.