Socio-motivational processes

When groups learn or work together, personal motivational aspects pervade each group member and can lead to the emergence of a collective motivational dynamics.

External constraints can also shape group members’ motivation. These factors are assumed to modulate group members’ task commitment. In this section, we broadly describe some research contributions in this domain that are relevant as part of this thesis. Some concepts appear to be at the crossroads of motivational and socio-relational processes (e.g. group cohesion) and will be also addressed in section 2.3.5.

2.3.3.1 Collective beliefs and attitudes

Collective self-esteem Aside from self-esteem, Crocker and Luhtanen (1990) pro-posed the existence of another concept called collective self-esteem. It refers to the level of esteem that individuals have for their belonging group. In the same way that individuals seek to maintain a satisfactory level of self-esteem (beliefs concern-ing skills, abilities or attractiveness), they are also motivated to maintain a good level of collective self-esteem. The will of preserving collective self-esteem gener-ates behaviors aiming at praising one’s group (i.e., ingroup members) and dero-gating others (i.e., outgroup members). As a consequence, individuals will tend to evaluate ingroup members more favorably than outgroup members, even if they do not get any personal benefit from it. As for self-esteem, the authors also postulated that collective self-esteem is an individual characteristic that shows interindividual differences. In other words, some people attempt to enhance their collective self-esteem more than others when it is threatened. For example, contrary to people with a lower level of collective self-esteem, people with a higher level of collective self-esteem tend to exhibit biases (e.g., in-group favoritism) or distortions of reality (e.g., overestimation of ingroup value) when their belonging group in threatened (i.e., failure feedback). Collective self-esteem would be positively associated with task performance (Ko & Choi, 2019).

Collective efficacy Another well studied collective belief is collective efficacy. It is the collective counterpart of self-efficacy (see section 2.2.3). It can be defined as “a group’s shared belief in its conjoint capability to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given levels of attainments” (Bandura, 1977, p. 477).

The overall idea behind collective efficacy is that common beliefs regarding how individuals think that they can overcome challenges as a unit influence how the group function more or less well together (Lent et al., 2006). As an example, positive beliefs about the team’s capabilities increase creativity and productivity among its members (Donohoo et al., 2018). Collective efficacy has been related to numerous variables such as team cohesion, affective outcomes, or group performance. Group members’ perception of collective efficacy may have significant effects on learning outcomes (Kreijns et al., 2003; Mullins et al., 2013). In general, meta-analyses report effect sizes around .40, and collective efficacy would account for twenty percent of group performance variance (Lent et al., 2006). Moreover, collective efficacy would relate more highly to group performance than self-efficacy measures (Lent et al., 2006).

Positive interdependence Positive interdependence implies that group members have a high degree of interdependence and rely strongly on each other to achieve their desired goal. Interdependence among members is an essential character of cooperation as a change in the state of any member or subgroup changes the state of any other member or subgroup. In the social interdependence theory, Johnson and Johnson (2009) posits that cooperation¹ enables positive interdependence, i.e., a perception of a common goal that closely links individuals’ successes. This positive interdependence is considered as an active promoter of the benefits of cooperation.

Mutual learning goals, joint rewards, divided resources, and complementary roles are crucial components leading to its emergence, as well as the creation of a collective identity, space, fiction, and challenge.

Group cohesion Positive interdependence can generate group cohesion, that refers to both the task (task cohesion) and the relationship among members (social cohe-sion). Task cohesion has a strong motivational nature as it refers to the commitment of a group to achieve a goal in a collective effort. Social cohesion has a more rela-tional nature and will be addressed in section 2.3.5. A high degree of group cohesion promotes individual accountability (i.e., group member are accountable for group success or failure), which prevents social loafing (Karau & Williams, 1993). It also bolsters promotive interaction, i.e., the ongoing effort in encouraging and facilitat-ing each other’s attempt to achieve the task, which is crucial for collaborators to be efficient.

1The Johnson and Johnson’ definition of cooperation is close to our definition of collaboration as part of this thesis

Groupthink However, group cohesion can also a double-edged effects. Although it can enable the willingness to help each other, it could also promote groupthink when task cohesion is too strong. Groupthink can be defined as “a mode of think-ing that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (Janis, 2008, p. 237). Groupthink happens particularly when group cohesion is high, which implies a strong feeling of solidar-ity among group members. The presence of a structural fault in the group such as poor decision-making procedures as well as the emergence of a provocative situ-ation causing stress to the group (e.g., challenging group project) may precipitate groupthink (Littlejohn et al., 2017). As a result, the group may become overly tol-erant and lose critical thinking about group members’ ideas. Negative outcomes of groupthink could be: only considering a limited number of apparent alternatives in-stead of a broad range of creative possibilities, not reviewing a consensual decision critically, not considering previously ignored minority opinions, neglecting expert opinion, only considering information in favor of the consensual decision, not con-sidering a plan B, failure being considered as impossible (Littlejohn et al., 2017).

Social loafing and free-riding Another barrier to efficient group collaboration includes two close phenomena, namely social loafing and free riding. Both of them represent a lack, deliberate or not, of personal investment. In social loafing, individuals invest unconsciously less energy when they collaborate than when they work alone (Decuyper et al., 2010; Linnenbrink-Garcia & Pekrun, 2011; Mullins et al., 2013). This effect could be due to the group size, which may decrease the personal significance of group members and makes personal contributions more challenging to emerge (Kreijns et al., 2003). Therefore, their motivation to contribute implicitly decreases. To counter this effect, Mullins et al. (2013) emphasize the necessity for group members to be made to feel that their personal effort is indis-pensable for the group’s success. In the free-rider or hitchhiking effect, a member deliberately takes credit for the group achievement without having participated in group work (Decuyper et al., 2010; Kreijns et al., 2003). Kreijns et al. (2003) specify that group members diminish their effort as they perceive that their effort becomes non-essential to group success. In other terms, if the group is doing enough to succeed, some people do not intend to continue to contribute. Therefore, their will to contribute explicitly decreases. Thus, the social loafer and the free-rider differ in that the former lacks the motivation to contribute, while the latter takes advantage of the group to avoid contributing (Kreijns et al., 2003). Both free-riding and social loafing may give rise to the sucker effect. As the more productive group members note that some other group members are less active in the group work, the former refuse to support non-contributing members anymore (Mullins et al., 2013). As a consequence, they also reduce their personal effort, contributing to jeopardize the collaboration (Kreijns et al., 2003).

In summary, collaborative problem-solving also involve socio-motivational processes that permeate the group and create a collective motivational tone.

These processes include collective phenomena such as beliefs, attitudes, inter-dependence, group cohesion, social loafing, which can foster or hinder group performance.