Getting things done in groups sometimes demands putting up with the unfairly low contribution of "slackers."

We designed a new decision game to study the dynamics of "pushing ahead" versus holding back in this dilemma.

Not getting too "bent out of shape" by those not pulling their weight emerges as a helpful lesson.

You’re part of a group—maybe family, maybe fellow investors or professionals, maybe a team of managers or employees—working together to complete a project that none of you could complete on your own. It could be a small project, like beautifying the land enclosed by a cul-de-sac shared by five homes or providing dishes for a family gathering, or a larger one, like researching and writing a report about a new product line or community center. The dynamics at work are even present on far larger scales, like determining contributions to the U.N. or N.A.T.O., or what effort individual countries contribute to fighting climate change.

Most of you are doing your best to push the project along, but a few seem to keep probing to figure out how little they can get away with doing and to what extent others will pick up the slack for them. If replacing them with others who’ll pull their weight isn’t feasible, should you keep contributing your own effort or funds, pull back to try to teach the laggards a lesson, or give up and stop throwing good money (effort) after bad?

Dilemmas of Cooperation

Both economists and psychologists have conducted thousands of studies of dilemmas of cooperation that include people in this sort of position. One of the most pervasive themes of those studies is that many people intensely dislike having others free ride on their efforts, and that cooperation often founders on the nearly ubiquitous presence, along with these detesters of free riding, of individuals who try to get away with doing less.

Studies by behavioral experimental economists........

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