Team- or Reward-Induced Effort Gains in Track and Field Relays? A Replication and Extension of Schleu et al. (2019)

In 2019, Schleu et al. showed that 400-m runners at major championships exhibited team effort gains-they ran faster in the relay than in the individual competition. However, due to low statistical power, it remains unclear whether these findings are replicable. In a replication and extension of this study, we wanted to find out whether its findings replicate in a sample of 1,718 observations from 1,270 U.S. college athletes and whether effort expenditure is driven by working in a team or the chance of valuable outcomes in the relay. As shown by linear mixed modeling and regression analyses, runners exhibited effort gains only if their relays had high medal chances and if they had not been successful in the individual competition (i.e., did not place first to third). Moreover, relay members who had been successful in the individual competition showed effort losses. Overall, effort expenditure was thus driven by rewards.