This paper discusses how game theory and communication theory can be used to address the problem of free-riding in collegiate group activities to increase trust and cooperation among teammates. We show that sanctionability and good communication through repeated interactions are effective in deterring free riding.
For many incoming college students, group work is the highlight of their college experience. The prospect of collaborating with a diverse group of people in a new environment, gaining knowledge, and exchanging opinions is highly anticipated. However, the reality is often not so romantic. Often, the romance takes a turn for the weird as the group activities progress. Disagreements arise, and irritation sets in when other members don’t deliver on time or are late for meetings. Worst of all, when the planned schedule keeps getting delayed, or when someone’s negligence makes everyone else’s hard work go to waste, these group activities become a source of stress instead of the anticipation they should be. This pales in comparison to having someone suddenly drop out of contact. It’s just as uncomfortable when you’re late and don’t do what you’re supposed to do. The more this builds up, the harder it is to talk to each other, and the more distrust grows among the group. This distrust doesn’t just affect your group work, it can negatively affect your relationships and motivation to learn throughout your college career.
Some students even refer to a group that is not working well as a “cancerous mass”. This negative nickname goes beyond student frustration and illustrates the consequences of poorly organized group activities. Tension between students is one of the main causes of conflict in group activities, which makes free-riders even more likely.
In this article, we’ll discuss how to smooth out these often troublesome group activities, especially by applying concepts from game theory to discuss how to prevent group members from free-riding. One of the main reasons for free-riding in group activities is that there is no way to punish free-riders. Free riders have nothing to lose. If the free-rider doesn’t do his or her share of the work and doesn’t deliver, it’s the other members of the group who end up losing out, because the work that the free-rider didn’t do will be picked up by someone else. Even if the work is submitted incomplete, it’s still a loss for the free rider who didn’t put in any effort. If there was a way to punish free riders, you might expect the number of free riders to decrease somewhat. In this situation, the free-riders are selfish, and the group members who work hard to participate in group activities are altruistic.
Situations like this are common across human societies, and we can observe these interactions in a variety of settings. We’ll expand on this by applying similar concepts to the question of whether there is a reason to live rightly. It’s also meaningful to look at how humans, as social animals, have solved these problems and how we’ve built cooperation and trust.
The first way to prevent free-riding in group activities is to make sure that students in the same group are from the same major as much as possible. The situation in group activities is very similar to the situation in which repetition is not assumed when describing the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis. Often, group activities are organized in different departments to encourage meeting different people. The problem with this is that people come from different departments and rarely see each other after the group is over, so it’s hard to penalize someone for getting a free ride this time by not letting them join the group next time, or not helping them with an assignment. There’s no “next time” in the first place. This is an example of a non-repeatable interaction where the altruistic person loses and the selfish person gains.
In this situation, repetition of the interaction is necessary to empower the altruistic individual, i.e., the one who faithfully participates in the group activity. If the group members are from the same major and will be interacting with each other throughout their college careers, there are many more ways for them to respond when one of them gets a free ride than if they are not. They can retaliate directly by not wanting to have the person in their group the next time they have a group activity, or they can discredit the person by letting their peers know that they’ve been cheating. In fact, I have never heard of anyone getting a free ride in a group activity in a major class.
I once listened to a friend complain in a liberal arts class that she was worried about being placed in a group with a friend who had a reputation for free-riding on group assignments. Contrary to everyone’s fears, the friend who was rumored to be a free rider participated in the group activities diligently, including being the presenter of the final product presentation in the major lecture. The burden of possible retaliation for free-riding on a major lecture may have affected his participation.
As such, group work within a major naturally encourages high participation and accountability. In the process, students learn the importance of cooperation and responsibility, which is an important asset beyond academics and into their social lives. Grouping activities with close people who have the means to impose sanctions on each other will lower the expected value of the benefits of free riding and discourage free riding.
Another way is to encourage communication among group members. In many liberal arts courses, when students are assigned to work in groups, they often just introduce themselves and get right to work. Since we don’t know each other yet, it’s hard to get in touch with each other right away if something goes wrong. The most frustrating thing about group work is when a member doesn’t do their job and doesn’t communicate. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t do a good job, or even if you didn’t do everything, if you talk about it and keep checking in with each other, you’ll feel much less frustrated. If you stay in touch and keep the lines of communication open, you’ll have less discord in the group and more participation in group activities because of the trust you’ve developed in each other.
This is in line with communication theory, which explains the emergence of altruism. For example, in this science and technology writing course, the professor set up a KakaoTalk chat room for students and professors to communicate with each other and with the professor. This kind of pre-assignment conversation will have a positive impact on the group’s participation in the group activity by making them feel comfortable to communicate their ideas. We’re not just talking about encouraging verbal communication. Just as it is said that you get closer to each other through physical contact, non-verbal communication also affects people’s willingness to participate.
In the first semester’s course, “Understanding Our Bodies,” the group climbed Gwanak Mountain together and had to measure their heart rate every 10 minutes to write a report. On the day of the climb, people who had only met twice before became incredibly close to each other as they sweated through the difficult trail, and when writing the report afterward, every single person shared their roles. As with these examples, free-riders will be reduced if the course organizes opportunities for group members to communicate and get to know each other before the assignment begins.
The trust that is built through these interactions is not just limited to the assignment, but has a lasting impact on the rest of their university life. University isn’t just a place to gain knowledge, it’s also a place to grow through interaction with different people. Through these experiences, students will realize the value of collaboration and become mature members of society.
Which brings us to the bigger question: is there a reason to live right? As mentioned earlier, the reason for free-riding is that the free-rider has nothing to lose by not participating in the group activity, and it is difficult to retaliate against the free-rider after the group activity is over. Moreover, many of the people you meet on the road will never see you again, so how should you treat them morally? Is it a big deal if you throw trash on the road or casually argue with passersby?
The world has become a smaller place since the development of the Internet, the spread of smartphones, and social media. The internet has made it easier to get to know people and connect with them, so we know more people, and there are no longer any “one and done” people. To draw on the previous concept, it’s hard to find an interaction in modern society that doesn’t involve repetition. In fact, it’s not uncommon for something as simple as a lawmaker making a bad comment or a young woman causing a scene on the subway to go viral on social media, leading to identification and massive social retribution. In such a society, doing the right thing is not just a matter of individual will, but has literally become a social obligation.
You can also think about it from a personal perspective. Living right is all about communicating with others and living in harmony. They say that humans are social animals. We live as members of a society, from the smallest family to the largest city or country. To break the social norms and not live correctly can be understood as a refusal to be a member of society. After all, living right is what you should do by virtue of the fact that you live in this society.
It’s very satisfying when a group activity goes well. It’s very gratifying to see people reconcile their differences and build a tower that they couldn’t have built alone, step by step, whether it’s well-received or not. In team play and group activities, which are a big part of college life, free riders are literally like a cancerous lump that causes you pain, but you can’t get rid of it at will. In this article, I’ve been thinking about how to prevent free riders from forming, citing the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis and the communication hypothesis. Using the repetition-reciprocity hypothesis, we put people of the same major in the same group to leave room for retaliation against free-riders, and the communication hypothesis, which states that interaction between parties creates altruism, suggests that we can increase participation by first presenting ways to get to know the group members in lectures. Furthermore, I thought along similar lines about whether we have a reason to be morally upright in society as a whole.
In the end, preventing free riding and achieving success in group activities is not just about the success of the assignment, but an important factor that makes the whole college life meaningful. Through this, students will learn social responsibility, form mature relationships, and ultimately contribute to building a better society.
