Contents
1.00 – 0.93 – 0.85 – 0.49. These four numbers come from experiments at a French agricultural school between 1882 and 1887. They show how much force a man exerts when he pulls alone, in a pair, in a group of three and in a group of eight. The man who recorded them actually wanted to find out something entirely different. An example of the Team Principle of Size.
An Agricultural Engineer Measures Pulling Power
Situation
Maximilien Ringelmann, born in 1861, was a French agricultural engineer. For a long time, people took him for a German. At the Grand-Jouan agricultural school, he measured how much force people exert when pulling and pushing loads. His subjects were male students at the school. What he measured was maximum short-term force, using a recording dynamometer. His actual subject was the performance of humans, animals and machines in agriculture. The group finding is regarded as a by-product.
Connection to the team principle
Max Ringelmann was not looking for insights about teams. That makes what he found all the more credible. The task is the simplest imaginable: everyone does the same thing, in the same direction, at the same time. If size already comes at a cost here, it certainly does in more demanding collaboration.
Eight Pull Like Four
Situation
The result: the more men pulled together, the less each one contributed. If the force of a man pulling alone is set at 1.00, then each man in a pair contributes 0.93, in a group of three 0.85 and in a group of eight only 0.49. Extrapolated, eight men pulling together exert about as much force as four men each pulling on their own. Max Ringelmann attributed the loss mainly to a lack of simultaneity: the men did not pull at the same moment.
Connection to the team principle
Here is the core of the principle in numbers. The total force grows with each man – eight pull more than three. But the force per man falls. The Team Principle of Size captures both in one sentence: every additional member adds strength and costs coordination. The eighth man on the rope is not a mistake. He is just more expensive than he looks.
Published Late, Long Cited Unread
Situation
The report was not published until 1913, in the annals of France’s National Agronomic Institute, where Max Ringelmann was by then a professor of agricultural engineering. For decades his finding was cited without anyone knowing the original. It was not until 1986 that David A. Kravitz and Barbara Martin tracked down the paper and set the details straight. Today the work is regarded as one of the first experiments in social psychology.
Connection to the team principle
The study’s history is a reminder to handle its numbers with care. They come from a pure strength task and are about 140 years old. They cannot be transferred one-to-one to a project team. What carries over is the principle, not the factor 0.49.
Not Just Coordination, but Effort Too
Situation
In 1974, Alan G. Ingham, George Levinger, James Graves and Vaughn Peckham repeated the experiment with a twist. The subjects only believed that others were pulling on the rope with them. In reality, they were pulling alone. Their performance dropped anyway. So part of the loss has nothing to do with poor coordination; it comes from flagging effort. From 1979 onward, this second component was studied under the name “social loafing.”
Connection to the team principle
“Coordination” in the core statement should therefore be understood broadly. Size has a cost in two ways. First, people’s efforts mesh less well. Second, individuals try less hard when their contribution disappears in the crowd. Practice helps against the first. Against the second, it helps to keep every contribution visible – and that is easier in small teams.
The Limits of the Finding
Situation
The effect is not inevitable. There are indications that it did not occur among people with experience in team sports. And other research shows that larger teams often achieve more overall – just less per person. There is no fixed optimal number.
Connection to the team principle
“Performance per person falls” does not mean “small is always better.” The load-bearing part of the core statement is its ending: as small as the task allows. If the load needs eight men, eight have to pull. But no one should believe that eight will deliver eight times as much.
Key takeaways
Key Lessons
- For every additional member, expect less than one full unit of strength. Plan for the loss instead of being surprised by it.
- Keep each person’s contribution visible. People who disappear in the crowd pull less hard – usually without noticing.
- Practice working together. Part of the loss comes from a lack of simultaneity, and that can be trained.
- Enlarge a team when the task demands it – but justify it with the task, not with a feeling that more always helps more.
Summary
Max Ringelmann wanted to know how much force people exert in farm work and, almost in passing, discovered a basic law of collaboration: the group pulls more than the individual, but each member of the group pulls less than when alone. Later experiments showed that two losses lie behind this – poorer coordination and reduced effort. His numbers apply to a simple strength task and are no yardstick for your team. But in the simplest possible task, they show what the Team Principle of Size means: every additional member adds strength and costs coordination.