Sports teams having presence of too many individuals with top talent can undermine players' willingness to coordinate and could affect the overall team performance, as suggested by new research.
INSEAD Professor Roderick Swaab said that most people believed that the relationship between talent and team performance was linear i.e. the more their team was packed with talent, the better they will do.
Swaab asserted that their latest research documenting a 'too-much-talent effect', revealed that for teams that required high levels of interdependence, like football and basketball, talent facilitates team performance, but only up to a point.
Swaab further said that as the FIFA World Cup 2014 came near, they expected to see plenty of team-sheets boasting impressive lineups with top talented players, however, coaches that simply selected their side with superstars may, contrary to popular belief, might be the ones who will take an early exit from Brazil.
The study is published in journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
