Washington, Dec 7 (IANS) Competing against large numbers of people subdues motivation and performance, says a new research.
The larger the number of examinees, the lower the average grade. This is one of the findings of a series of new studies carried out by scientists at the Universities of Haifa and Michigan.

“It is a well-established fact that subjective factors influence our motivation to compete. Our recent studies have shown that objective factors, such as the size of a competing group, also have an effect on motivation,” explains Avishalom Tor from Haifa’s Faculty of Law.

These studies, which Tor carried out along with Stephen Garcia from University of Michigan, examined whether a large number of participants would affect motivation and performance of the individual competitor.

The first study investigated the grades of the SAT university entrance examination across the US.

The scientists divided the number of examinees in each state by the number of sites where the test was held in that state, to determine the average number of examinees per site in each state.

The researchers found that the lower the average number of students being examined at the sites of a given state, the higher the average score in that state.

Seeing as it is difficult to make assumptions based on averages calculated at a state level, a second and more focused study was carried out.

This time, the results were gathered from a psychological test, known as the Cognitive Reflection Test, that was taken by 1,383 students at the University of Michigan.

The data was assembled from 22 different sittings of the same test over three years, when it was known not only how many examinees were taking the test at each session but also their individual grades and demographic variables.

A third study that the researchers carried out consisted of a controlled survey. The experiment asked 74 students to take a short, timed quiz when sitting alone.

Half the students were told they belonged to a group of 10 students taking the quiz, while the other half were told there were 100 examinees in total.

They were also told that the first 20 percent to complete the test - without compromising the accuracy of their answers - would be given $5, says a release of Haifa and Michigan.

The results showed that students who thought they were competing against nine others completed their tests significantly faster than those who thought they were competing against 99 others, although the accuracy of the responses did not differ between the groups.