Ringelmann rediscovered: The original article
Kravitz and Martin located Ringelmann's original report, which theory and research on group effort had long credited through a 1927 citation to Moede. Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer, gathered his data in the 1880s and reported it in 1913, measuring how hard people pushed or pulled a load horizontally. Comparing individual with group performance was a secondary interest of his experiment, and he attributed the fall in group performance to coordination loss while also recognising motivational factors. The authors link his results to contemporary theory and research.
Kravitz and Martin located Ringelmann's original report, which theory and research on group effort had long credited through a 1927 citation to Moede. Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer, gathered his data in the 1880s and reported it in 1913, measuring how hard people pushed or pulled a load horizontally. Comparing individual with group performance was a secondary interest of his experiment, and he attributed the fall in group performance to coordination loss while also recognising motivational factors. The authors link his results to contemporary theory and research.
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Kravitz, D. A., & Martin, B. (1986). Ringelmann rediscovered: The original article. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(5), 936-941. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.5.936