The problem of free-riders in group work undermines a sense of community and collaboration. To combat this, small groups, repetitive assignments, and a reward and punishment system based on participation are effective ways to reduce free-riders and increase the effectiveness of group work.
It has been said, ‘If you look at university group work, you can see why communism is impossible.’ Group work is required in many classes in the name of “getting out in the world, practicing working on projects with others, and building collaboration and leadership skills,” but it often leads to distrust and heartache in relationships. The negative effects of group work are mainly caused by free riders, who think, “If I don’t do it, someone else will.” Free riding, which makes the rest of the group suffer many times over by not participating in group activities, is a typical selfish behavior that harms others but benefits oneself in the short term. Selfish behavior should be eradicated because it benefits the self in the short term but causes irreparable damage to the self in the long term in terms of relationships. Conversely, altruistic behaviors are less beneficial than selfish behaviors in the short term, but can be more beneficial in the long term, so we can see that we should live an altruistic, or socially “correct” life.
Following the above logic, we can conclude that free riding is not the right choice because it benefits you in the short term but hurts you in terms of your relationships with your groupmates. Following this logic, the best grouping strategy is to maximize the losses from selfish behavior so that potential free-riders are aware of the losses they will suffer. To do this, the first rule of thumb is to keep the number of people in a group as small as possible, say three or four, to maximize the amount of damage that can be done by a single free rider. There is also the principle of iteration, which means that instead of doing a large project once a semester, you should do several smaller projects. Finally, causality should be ensured by rewarding or punishing students according to their participation in the project.
Considering all three of these principles, the best group activity to prevent free riding is to randomly assign groups at the beginning, and then reveal the contributions of each group member to the whole class through a post-activity presentation. It’s important to choose assignments that don’t involve writing papers or reports that don’t showcase the contributions of the entire group, but rather pair students with opposing viewpoints within the group, such as writing a column in a two-on-two debate, so that the free-riders feel the void. In subsequent iterations of the project, students can self-organize into groups, so that students who contribute more to the group work are rewarded with higher preferences from others when they work together, while free riders are socially punished with lower preferences in group selection.
The system is based on the reciprocity-reciprocity hypothesis and the eusociality hypothesis, which explain human altruism. Altruistic behavior is the act of acting for the benefit of another person or community, even at the expense of one’s own self-interest, and since group work is an activity in which individuals invest their time and effort to participate and work hard for the common good of getting a good score on a group task, participating in group work can be considered altruistic. The repetition-reciprocity hypothesis states that if you act selfishly first, the other person will also act selfishly, and conversely, if you do good deeds, the other person will also do good deeds and get better results, so they will choose to act altruistically. As the group activity is repeated many times, students will naturally contribute to the group work because they know that the other person’s contribution to the group work will be proportional to their past contributions. This is complemented by the herding behavior hypothesis, which states that there is no guarantee of each student’s contribution in the final group task. The hypothesis states that altruistic humans perceive that they lose out in the company of selfish humans, so they will seek out relationships with altruistic humans and avoid relationships with selfish humans. When forming groups for the final group assignment, students already know each other’s contributions to the group, so those with lower contributions are grouped with those with lower contributions to minimize the losses of those with higher contributions.
As members of society, we are faced with a choice every day between making choices for the good of the community and making choices for our own self-interest. From a relational perspective, the reason why we should live altruistically is closely related to the fact that the modern society we live in is undergoing a rapid transformation due to the advancement of technology. With the advancement of information and communication technology, modern society is entering a hyper-connected society, which is defined as a society in which people are closely connected to people, people to things, things to things, and online to offline on a one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many basis through digital technology. As of 2023, there are approximately 5.3 billion internet users and 8.2 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, and with the introduction of IPv6, the number of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses is virtually infinite. South Korea is a powerhouse in the hyperconnected world, with a 96% internet usage rate and 88% high-speed broadband penetration. The importance of reputation in this hyperconnected world is summarized by Kevin Bacon’s Sixth Law, which states that all living things and objects are connected through six relationships or fewer one-to-one relationships. This law is naturally stronger in hyper-connected societies, and it has a lot to do with the eusocial species hypothesis, which states that altruistic humans tend to stick together with altruistic humans. In previous societies, leaving one’s original group could lead to a new social reputation, but in hyper-connected societies, this reset is not possible. Therefore, a person with a bad reputation is very likely to be harmed in the long run by the eusociality hypothesis described above. Therefore, from a social point of view, the choice that makes the individual’s reputation as good as possible is the wisest choice, given the maximum future utility, so we are right to be altruistic.
Another rationale for living rightly from a relational perspective is closely related to the costly signaling hypothesis, which explains the emergence of altruism. The costly signaling hypothesis suggests that altruistic favors can be explained as a way to emphasize one’s competence and gain relational dominance in a relationship by paying a high price, which is exemplified by the Potlatch festival of the Kwakiutl tribe. In Potlatch, the richest person in the village gives an enormous amount of gifts to everyone who participates in the festival, and at the end of the ceremony, throws his or her possessions into the fire to burn. The bigger the gift, the more valuable and expensive the item, the more respect the person is honored, so much so that they may even burn their own home. In modern society, selfless acts can be said to contribute to increasing the credibility and continuity of relationships by emphasizing the benefits of the relationship rather than the dominance of the relationship, and the benefits of such acts are explained in the book ‘Other PR’ using the example of George Lard. George Lard is an American who was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s best-selling car salesman for 12 years. He was able to succeed in the market because of his philosophy: ‘If one person’s relationship is equivalent to 250 people, then if you impress one customer, you have 250 potential customers. As these examples show, altruistic behavior in relationships can be very beneficial for long-term gains, so choosing altruistic behavior is rational compared to selfish behavior.
From the above rationale, we can see why we should live a righteous life, giving up the short-term benefits of selfish behavior in order to benefit in the long run. However, there are selfless people in the world who don’t consider the long-term benefits of their actions, and will lay down their lives for a cause or give everything for their beliefs. The right way to live is not a calculated act that takes into account one’s own long-term interests, but also includes pure altruism, the act of sacrificing for the sake of others without expecting long-term benefits. So why should we be altruistic when it’s not in our long-term interest?
On a snowy, cold winter day in 2016, Gwanghwamun Square was filled with people and lit with candles in what later history will recognize as the “hot winter. The mindset of the people who filled Gwanghwamun Square is the answer to these questions. They were there with a clear sense of purpose, but that purpose was not solely for themselves, but for their community and for future generations they may not even know. On a personal level, it is self-evident that it is far more beneficial in the short term to watch the protests from a warm room on a TV screen than to go out and protest on a cold winter’s day, and that even if you do protest outside in the cold, the personal benefits of being part of the protest are minimal. However, I believe that the reason why the Gwanghwamun Gate is filled with candles every Saturday and the world’s largest peace rally takes place is because there is an inherent goodness in humans that believes in “justice” and acts in the service of that belief, and there is a desire to improve the community at the expense of oneself. Humans have “mirror neurons” that allow us to empathize with the suffering of others, and because of this, we naturally empathize with others, suffer with them, and work to reduce their suffering. This desire to alleviate the suffering of others and the good will of individuals to make their communities better is inherent in our nature and is the most fundamental basis for living right.
With this rationale, we can examine what makes us live right and derive how we can institutionally encourage altruistic behavior in group activities. Altruistic behavior is good for the individual as a member of society, as a subject of relationships, for the good of the community, and ultimately for the good of future generations, as it is the mechanism that ensures a good quality of life. Selfish behavior may be beneficial in the short term, but in today’s hyper-connected society, it tarnishes one’s reputation, diminishes one’s value in relationships, and violates one’s conscience, making it unsatisfying to be human. We should always strive to live a righteous life, not only because it improves our social reputation and increases our potential future utility, but also because it gives us an advantage in relationships and satisfies our conscience on a personal level.
