Free-riders, faultlines, and fissions : understanding transformations within small task groups

Abstract

Group fissions occur when two or more members leave a parent group to either form a new group or join an existing group.  Despite their widespread occurrence in diverse settings, much of the social psychological research on membership change has concentrated on why individual members leave groups alone, rather than in conjunction with others.  This thesis introduces the concepts of group fissions and group faultlines to the study of membership dynamics and transformations in small social dilemma groups.

In a series of studies, two potentially important endogenous factors in the fission process are examined; free-rider conflict and the role of diversity faultlines (subgroup divisions).  Evidence of how the free-rider perspective and the subgroup perspective may be linked with fission is proffered in the first part of this thesis.  By integrating these perspectives it is possible to make hypotheses about the pathways leading from conflict to fission, and the role that faultlines may play in the process.  According to the strong faultline hypothesis, the presence of subgroup divisions magnifies the impact of the free-rider conflict, so that groups with faultlines are more likely to split than those without faultlines. The weak faultline hypothesis presupposes that free-rider conflict alone is sufficient to initiate fission, and the faultlines facilitate the fission by determining the location of the split – the faultline is not a cause of the fission per se.  The research provided in this thesis has a varied methodological base incorporating both role-playing studies and controlled laboratory experimentation.

The second part of this thesis describes four studies that employ step-level public good dilemmas to examine the validity of the strong and weak faultline hypotheses.  In three out of four studies, group fission was shown to be a two-stage process; the free-rider conflict initiated the fission and the faultlines determined the composition of the break-away group, thus supporting the weak faultline hypothesis.

The aims of the third part of the thesis are three-fold. We continue to search to support for the faultline hypotheses, as above, extend the faultline hypothesis by adding a physical faultline manipulation (ease of resource division), and investigate the popularity of the fission option as a way of dealing with free-riders when other structural solutions are available (electing a leader, equal privatisation, harvest cap, sanctions).

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