Washington, Feb 11 (Inditop.com) Members of a group or team will work harder when they’re competing against a group with lower status than when pitted against a more highly ranked group, according to a new study.
The results run contrary to the common belief that underdogs have more motivation because they have the chance to “knock the higher-status group down a peg,” said Robert Lount, study co-author and assistant professor of management and human resources at Ohio State University’s (OSU) Fisher College of Business.
“We found over and over again across multiple studies that people worked about 30 percent harder when their group was competing against a lower-status group,” Lount said.
“It seems surprising to many people that the high-status team has more motivation, but it really makes sense. The higher-ranked group has more to lose if they don’t compare well against a lower-status group.”
“But if you’re the lower-status group and lose to your superior rival, nothing has changed — it just reaffirms the way things are,” Lount added. He conducted the study with Nathan Pettit of Cornell University.
Researchers conducted five studies involving college students. In most of the studies, they were asked to complete a simple task — for instance, crossing out all the vowels in a random string of letters. They were told to do as many as they could in a specific period of time.
The tasks were always simple, Lount said, so that the students’ ability wouldn’t be tested — only their motivation to complete as much of the task as possible.
Overall, the students completed about 30 percent more when they were competing against lower-ranked schools than they did when competing against more highly ranked colleges.
“The motivation gains were there when students felt their group’s superior status was threatened,” he said.
One of the study’s clearly showed how participants were motivated by the threat of losing to a team they considered inferior.
Their results appeared in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
