How can you prevent free-riding in group activities? Explore how to create a fair evaluation system that encourages sincere participation.
Group work and free riding, what’s the solution?
The point of group work is to foster teamwork, share ideas, and solve problems. This allows them to bounce ideas off each other and produce better results. It also helps them understand their roles and cultivate a sense of responsibility. Interacting with each other improves problem-solving skills and allows you to discover each other’s strengths. However, it can also lead to selfishness, as some people feel that they can get credit for solving a task for someone else, even if they don’t cooperate. This free-riding results in the responsible people doing the work of the free-riders and losing out on group activities. In this article, we’ll talk about how to expect others to do their share of the work, and how to prevent inconvenient free-riding so that we can have the best group activities. Furthermore, we’ll talk about whether there is a reason for humans to live right.
‘Retaliation’ through evaluation
In general, free riding is when you get a better grade than you deserve because of the sacrifices of others, i.e., you get a better grade than you actually deserve. Therefore, the group activities that are most prone to free riding are the ones where the professor evaluates the results of the group unilaterally. This is because, assuming that the outcome of the group activity is the same, i.e., the degree of evaluation received by the professor is the same, it is more beneficial to do less work. It is almost impossible for a professor to unilaterally evaluate the process rather than the outcome of a group activity. Therefore, if the evaluation among group members is reflected in the overall evaluation, it will be less unfair to sacrifice in group activities because they can get a better grade by receiving a better evaluation according to their contribution. On the other hand, free riders will be discouraged from taking free rides because they will suffer from poor ratings from their teammates. As a result, group members will be more willing to participate in group activities in order to get a good rating, which means that the group is doing its best work.
The reason why group members evaluating each other’s contributions to the group is the best way to ensure the best grouping is explained by the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis, which states that you get what you give and you lose what you offend. According to this hypothesis, humans act altruistically to avoid retaliation from others for their selfish behavior because repeatedly acting altruistically will cause others to act altruistically in the next situation, and acting selfishly will cause others to act selfishly in the next situation. Applying this hypothesis to group activities, we can say that the recurring situation is the group activity and the evaluation of the group members, and the other party is the other group members except you. In this context, the evaluation of the group activity is not just an evaluation, but the basis for trust and cooperation among the group members.
In this way, if the group members evaluate each other in the group activity to establish mutuality between themselves and the group members other than themselves, the group members will participate in the group activity sincerely, and the best group activity will be possible.
Is there a reason to live right?
In the case of the grouping method described above, altruistic behavior is not the same as selfless behavior, and selfish behavior is not the same as altruistic behavior. In other words, active participation in the grouping does not benefit from the other person’s active participation in the grouping, but rather from a good evaluation. This is a slight extension of the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis, but instead of repetition in which the same benefits are exchanged, repetition in which reciprocal benefits arise from a chain of different situations. So, on a broader scale, outside of group activities, can this repetition and reciprocity be established in our lives?
We are always “evaluating” someone in our lives. If we extend the idea of group activities, we can say that we are always evaluating each other. What we evaluate depends on the situation, and how it affects the other person depends on the situation. But because we are always evaluating each other, we need to live right. For example, if my selfish behavior hurts someone else, and even if that person doesn’t have the opportunity to be selfish to me the next time, that person will still evaluate me as a selfish person because of the harm I caused. If this evaluation influences other people (who become aware of the evaluation of me), then the probability that I will be harmed by my selfish behavior increases. Therefore, I should refrain from selfish behavior to prevent this from happening.
However, as the example shows, if the ‘evaluation’ has no effect, then my argument fails. This is where reciprocity comes in. Humans are social animals and always live in groups, so when someone evaluates someone else, other members of that group will be affected by that evaluation, and that will affect other situations within that group. Human beings and society are like an unbreakable chain, so when an evaluation of a human being is applied to society, another situation will be affected by that evaluation. As a result, the influence of evaluation exists in our society, and we must live correctly within it.
However, someone might say that there is no compulsion to act rightly because the benefits of selfish behavior are much greater than the benefits of such “evaluation”. This is true. It is possible that the benefit to society as a whole from doing the right thing is less than the benefit to someone from acting selfishly. But only for a moment. Because the person who acts selfishly is also a member of society, the damage caused by his or her selfish behavior will also appear in society. In addition, the benefit of selfish behavior is only short-term, and in the long run, the loss of social trust will be more damaging. Therefore, we should cultivate a beautiful society by doing the right thing and earning good reputation.
In conclusion, human beings will always be evaluated by other members of society for their behavior in a society where reciprocity exists. This evaluation will cause one’s own profit or loss, so it is necessary to strive for a good evaluation. In addition, gains from selfish behavior are short-lived and damage the overall society, so we should build a society that accumulates more valuable gains through right behavior. In other words, humans should live right.
