Group Work and Game Theory

The Prisoner's Dilemma (Wikipedia link here) is a staple of Game Theory, but it's come to my attention that the same concepts are at work in what can be called the Group Work Dilemma. The situation is this: if four people are given a graded project to complete by a certain date, what are the incentives for each individual. To simplify things, let's assume that everyone involved wants a high grade and that each person chooses either to do a lot of work on the project or no work at all.

The 'ideal' situation, then, is to do no work and have the other three group members complete the project-- this results in a high grade with no effort needed. The dilemma arrives because if each person chooses the 'ideal,' no work will be done on the project and everyone will receive a low grade. Because of these incentives, there's sometimes a game of chicken when approaching group deadlines-- if you wait for someone else to contribute, they might do work that you would otherwise do, but if you wait too long, your grade will suffer.

There are, of course, good ways to avoid this. One popular method is assigning each group member a specific task to complete, removing any need for games of chicken. Another thing that I've noticed works is to do a significant amount of work long before the due date, effectively forcing other group members to complete the rest of the project without calling on you to provide any input. In the end, though, there's only one way to be certain of that top grade: do it all yourself.