Motivation and group performance: Individual effort on collective tasks

Have you ever worked on a group project and felt that you were clearly putting in more effort than other group members? What was your reaction? Did you put in extra effort to compensate for the lack of effort of others, or did you also start to work less hard? Alternatively, have you ever been tempted, while working in a group, to let other group members do most of the hard work? The topic of this chapter is motivation of group members, and it considers the situations in which group members do or do not work hard.