A study of how being part of a group affects behavior was carried out not by a psychologist, but rather by an agricultural engineer. In 1913, Max Ringelmann found that a group of men exerting force together exerted less force than if they were working alone. But it wasn’t clear whether this ‘Ringleman effect’ was due to poor coordination, or because individuals were putting in less effort individually. Replications of Ringlemann’s experiment performed later revealed it to be ‘group loafing’ – groups are less motivated to work hard than when they act independently. In an experiment conducted by Latané and colleagues (1963), participants were asked to perform a task that involved clapping or shouting. They were told that they would either work alone or work together with four others. Latané found that participants who worked alone tended to shout louder and clap more loudly than those who were part of a group. He also discovered that working with others reduced the amount of noise made by each person, making it harder to identify the individual contributions. These findings suggest that we are able to share the pressure and responsibility of performing a task among multiple members of a group which leads to less effort and low performance by individuals in a group setting.
Mind and brain
In many cultures around this world, there is the view that humans have a soul that exists independently of the physical body. For Greek philosophers, the soul was also viewed as the seat of our reasoning abilities - what we would call our minds today. While Aristotle...
