Isegoria

Will Felps, who studies organizational behavior at the University of South Wales in Australia, secretly brought grad student Nick into his experiment, where groups were asked to construct a marketing plan for a start-up, and had him portray three negative archetypes — the Jerk (an aggressive, defiant deviant), the Slacker (a withholder of effort), and the Downer (a depressive Eeyore type):

In almost every group, his behavior reduces the quality of the group’s performance by 30 to 40 percent. The drop-off is consistent whether he plays the Jerk, the Slacker, or the Downer.

“When Nick is the Downer, everybody comes into the meeting really energized. He acts quiet and tired and at some point puts his head down on his desk,” Felps says. “And then as the time goes by, they all start to behave that way, tired and quiet and low energy. By the end, there are three others with their heads down on their desks like him, all with their arms folded.”

When Nick plays the Slacker, a similar pattern occurs. “The group quickly picks up on his vibe,” Felps says. “They get done with the project very quickly, and they do a half-assed job. What’s interesting, though, is that when you ask them about it afterward, they’re very positive on the surface. They say, ‘We did a good job, we enjoyed it.’ But it isn’t true. They’d picked up on the attitude that this project really didn’t matter, that it wasn’t worth their time or energy. I’d gone in expecting that someone in the group would get upset with the Slacker or the Downer. But nobody did. They were like, ‘Okay, if that’s how it is, then we’ll be Slackers and Downers too.’”

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