Perception of emergent leadership hierarchies in task groups.

Abstract

Accuracy in perceiving emergent task and socioemotional leadership in small groups was studied. One hundred and forty-nine undergraduates viewed a videotape of a group and guessed the order in which the group would rank its members on five leadership test items. Tapes of six groups were used. Subjects were individually and collectively accurate beyond chance. Subjects' accuracy correlated .82 with measures of agreement among the stimulus-group members' rankings of each other. The data suggested that the perception of task and socioemotional leaderships are independent. Subjects were accurate in perceiving both task and socioemotional leadership independently of their accuracy in perceiving the group members' rates of participation.1 This article is based on a thesis presented by the first author to the faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master's degree. Some of the data presented in this article have already been reported by Stein (1971).

Identifying emergent leaders from verbal and nonverbal communications.

“…The work of Stein (1971;Stein, Geis, & Damarin, 1973; Stein, Note 2, Note 3) provides a new methodology for identifying emergent leader selection criteria. Stein's data suggested that his observer/subjects used the same or highly similar criteria to judge a target group's consensus on its members' leadership statuses as the group members used to formulate the consensus.…”

“…If this hypothesis is correct, observers will be accurate beyond chance in judging leadership hierarchies when they review a record of a target group's meeting containing (a) only verbal communications, (b) only nonverbal communications, or (c) both verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Stein (1971;Stein et al, 1973;Stein, Note 2) demonstrated that outside observers were able to predict group consensual rankings on leadership test items from combined verbal and nonverbal records (videotapes). The accuracy achieved for two socioemotional and three task leadership items over six target groups was roughly equivalent to the subjects' knowing in which third of the hierarchy a member belonged.…”

“…Only 1 of the 30 accuracy means was not significantly larger than chance. The perceptability of leadership from only verbal or only nonverbal communications is indirectly supported: (a) The group members' relative participation rates, which are very useful in predicting the other leadership continua (Stein et al, 1973), are apparent with either type of information, (b) Gitter (Note 4) filmed a professional actor delivering a monologue as a leader and as a follower. He found that the actor's role was judged with equal speed and accuracy with the presentation of audio and visual information combined, visual only, or audio only.…”

Children’s Learning Groups

“…The emergence of leadership is an important, yet missing, factor on how children learn in groups. Previous research on leaderless groups has found that leaders emerge within the group through certain achievement-related behaviors and motives (Bass, 1949;French & Stright, 1991;French, Waas, Stright, & Baker, 1986;Sorrentino, 1973;Sorrentino & Field, 1986;Stein, 1977;Stein, Geis, & Damarin, 1973). Behaviors, such as engagement, facilitating, soliciting opinion, organizing, and record keeping, distinguished emergent leaders from other group members (French & Stright, 1991).…”

Pre‐emptive game behaviour and the emergence of leadership

“…The correlations which are reported between this measure and observer ratings of leadership are consistently high (Gibb, 1950;Stein et al, 1973).…”