An examination of the stability and persistence of the Köhler motivation gain effect

The current paper reports the findings of an experiment designed to investigate the persistence of motivation gains in small groups. The current study had participants work on a conjunctive task, where they believed that their performance was highly instrumental for the group to perform well. Building on prior work on the Köhler effect, although motivation gains became smaller over time, these gains in effort still remained statistically significant across several work trials. Moreover, the attenuation of the Köhler effect was found to be moderated by the stability of group membership. More specifically, as compared with people who worked with the same partner (i.e., closed groups), gains in effort were found to be more robust for participants who worked with several different partners (i.e., open groups). The current findings help fill an important gap in the motivation gains literature by demonstrating that motivation gains in groups can persist across multiple work trials.