Abstract
We introduce group cohesion to study the economic relevance of social relationships in team production. We operationalize measurement of group cohesion, adapting the “oneness scale” from psychology. A series of experiments, including a preregistered replication, reveals strong, positive associations between group cohesion and performance assessed in weak-link coordination games, with high-cohesion groups being likely to achieve superior equilibria. In exploratory analysis, we identify beliefs rather than social preferences as the primary mechanism through which factors proxied by group cohesion influence group performance. Our evidence provides proof of concept for group cohesion as a useful tool for economic research and practice.
Author notes
We are grateful to Robert Cialdini and John K. Maner for sharing experimental tools. We thank Antonio Aréchar, Michalis Drouvelis, Francesco Fallucchi, Ernesto Gavassa Perez, Jose Vicente Guinot Saporta, Natalia Montinari, Daniele Nosenzo, and Simone Quercia for assistance with experiments. We have benefited greatly from discussions with Abigail Barr, Jordi Brandts, Leonardo Bursztyn, Colin Camerer, Gary Charness, Yan Chen, David Cooper, Vincent Crawford, Robin Cubitt, Enrique Fatas, Sourafel Girma, John Hillas, John List, Muriel Niederle, Pietro Ortoleva, Carla Rampichini, Al Roth, Marie-Claire Villeval, Roberto Weber, Frans van Winden, and Leat Yariv. We thank participants at various conferences, workshops, and seminars. This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grants ES/K002201/1 and ES/P008976/1), the European Research Council (grans ERC-AdG 295707 COOPERATION and ERC-AdG 101020453 PRINCIPLES), and the Italian Ministry of Education. The research was approved by the School of Economics Research Ethics Committee, University of Nottingham. We declare no relevant conflict of interest.
A supplemental appendix is available online at https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01283.