"The fewer the competitors, the harder they try"

Source: "Encouraging competitiveness: Psyched out," The Economist, July 9th 2009

The article describes research conducted by two behavioural researchers, Stephen Garcia at the University of Michigan and Avishalom Tor at the University of Haifa in Israel, in which they have demonstrated the likelihood that people put out less competitive effort the larger the group of people against which they are competing.

In their report on the matter in Psychological Science, Dr Garcia and Dr Tor dub their discovery the “n-effect” since “n” represents any numerical value in mathematics. If confirmed, it may mean not only that examination halls should be kept small— or, at least, the same size for all participants so that the playing field is level—but also that other competitive activities should be scaled down for best results.

Comment: I suspect this is a result that it is worth pursuing. For example, in organizations it may be useful to divide competitive classes into relatively small comparison groups to stimulate high performance by the individuals. JAD