There are lots of reasons to prefer friendly teams.
* Just, generally more enjoyable and productive experience. Most things are really not that important, particularly in school (which is where this experiment was run). And anyway, the purpose is often not to be optimally productive, but to learn something. If you are in a class where you are just clinging to some rockstar and getting A's that way, you don't have to learn anything.
* Lots of technical decisions are really not very important. Your first solution will probably not be great anyway. It is preferable to get the group to agree on something and move forward. This can be done by having some very competent, less nice person ram their solution through, but a nice, semi-competent group with a good dynamic can also agree on a bad solution, mess it up, and iterate until it works.
* Most people are really not that competent as far as I can tell. I mean, I've met people who can carry a team individually, but they are very rare, not common enough to plan on. People with more ego than talent are more common I think, and they have a net negative value in many cases. A friendly, incompetent person is at worst a minor distraction.
* Just, generally more enjoyable and productive experience. Most things are really not that important, particularly in school (which is where this experiment was run). And anyway, the purpose is often not to be optimally productive, but to learn something. If you are in a class where you are just clinging to some rockstar and getting A's that way, you don't have to learn anything.
* Lots of technical decisions are really not very important. Your first solution will probably not be great anyway. It is preferable to get the group to agree on something and move forward. This can be done by having some very competent, less nice person ram their solution through, but a nice, semi-competent group with a good dynamic can also agree on a bad solution, mess it up, and iterate until it works.
* Most people are really not that competent as far as I can tell. I mean, I've met people who can carry a team individually, but they are very rare, not common enough to plan on. People with more ego than talent are more common I think, and they have a net negative value in many cases. A friendly, incompetent person is at worst a minor distraction.