Gifts Exchanges in Team Production
I actually really enjoy reading this article, especially the description about the experiment with children and the discussion about the implication. The result is actually not surprising. When the resources are already there, people naturally act self-interest because there seems no reason for sharing. But when people pull the rope at the same time, the efforts suddenly bound them together and make them have this tendency to sharing the rewards. I believe this is because of the feeling of group production. When the rewards take some effort and people have to cooperate, the group production leads to the gift exchange.
This reminds me the experience of working with other students in calculus discussion section. During the discussion we'll be randomly assigned to group of three or four and to finish the worksheet together. Then TA would give everyone the same score based on one person's worksheet. That means in order to get good grades, group members would try to make everyone on the same page and work hard on every problem because we don't know whose worksheet would be graded. This works as gift exchanges.
When I am assigned to students who seemed to be well-prepared, I feel much more relieved. Because at most time, we'll read the question together, and then come up with an agreement on the solution, then check whether we get the same answer. If other members are motivated to solve the question as I do, I would be very willing to pull the rope and put as much efforts as I can because at last we'll all get great scores. And this is actually an effective way for group members to learn from each other because students can share different perspectives and everyone can take the benefit if anyone proposes a great idea. Thus in this group production, we are motivated to pull the rope together and share exactly the same rewards.
But group production is not always work efficiently. I remembered that one time, TA didn't randomly assign the group but instead let us group up ourselves. A girl just directly walked to me and asked to join my group. Her intention was so obvious because at last time we were in the same group and she found that I seemed to be really good at math. Then this "pulling the rope together" motivation disappears once someone decided to do nothing but waiting for other's actions. This is what happened. She just sat there and checked her Facebook on the phone. After we got a question done, she looked at my worksheet and copied on hers. At first I tried to explained to her how we got the answer. But later on I realized that this was just a waste of everyone else's time and she cared more about the final answer. So in group production, equaling everyone's reward regardless individual's efforts might cause inequality. But in the grading parts, we're not actually sharing any physical thing, so that when she gets the points, no one else is worse off. While in group, when some member tend to rely on others and not willing to make an input, that would lead to inefficiency. Others would also be affected by this attitude and try to pull the rope with less efforts or not at all.
When people work alone, then the reward is fully dependent on individual's input. As long as someone takes all the responsibility for himself or herself, it would be less likely to take a step back. Unless he or she loses confidence to achieve the goal and just give up. So for me, no matter working alone or within a group, I think the best way is to try my best to contribute despite other's reaction to the problem. There always have to be someone to bring up the responsibility awareness and attract more people to pull the rope together.
In your telling of the story, the girl was a free rider. So I wonder why you let her copy from you. Was that insurance for you, because the TA might have picked here instead of you? Could you have done something else in this case - not let the girl copy, show the TA your work, and tell the TA that she didn't try to do the problems? That would have been risky, but the way you told the story it didn't seem whether the TA cared about the girl being accountable or not. If you think of the TA as also part of the group, the TA was putting some burden on you. So might you have accepted the burden in a different way than you did?
ReplyDeleteI've had employees who have "yanked my chain" in the way the girl did to you in that calculus class. I dreaded those interactions. Like you, I would have preferred only to work with cooperative employees who were very productive. But reality doesn't always allow that to happen and you need to learn to counter when somebody tries to take advantage of your talent and your good graces. So in responding to my comment, you might write a bit about what you could have done to counter her, given that you knew ahead of time something like this was going to happen.
Yep she was a free rider. And after I realized her motivation after that time, I actually have two ways. The first is just avoiding working with her since we have 30 students in a discussion section. It's easy for me to find other students as a group. Another thing I could do is telling TA that she didn't do anything. But it is pretty risky and probably will bring the group nothing. TA would try to convince us to "discuss together" and figure out the questions. And also, performance in this case is not measurable or verifiable, it is difficult for TA to decide how to give the scores in this case.
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