CeDEx
Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics

CeDEx 2022-12: Measuring "group cohesion" to reveal the power of social relationships in team production

Summary

We introduce “group cohesion” to study the economic relevance of social relationships in team production. We operationalize measurement of group cohesion, adapting the “oneness scale” from psychology. A series of experiments, including a pre-registered replication, reveals strong positive associations between group cohesion and performance assessed in weak-link coordination games, with high-cohesion groups being very likely to achieve superior equilibria. In exploratory analysis, we identify beliefs rather than social preferences as the primary mechanism through which factors proxied by group cohesion influence group performance. Our evidence provides proof-of-concept for group cohesion as a useful tool for economic research and practice. 

Download the paper in PDF format

This is a revised version of 2019-16

Authors

Simon Gächter, Chris Starmer and Fabio Tufano


 

View all CeDEx discussion papers | View all School of Economics featured discussion papers

 

Posted on Thursday 25th August 2022

Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics

Sir Clive Granger Building
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0)115 951 5458
Enquiries: jose.guinotsaporta@nottingham.ac.uk
Experiments: cedex@nottingham.ac.uk