“First, in our study we follow the literature in using fellow group member attributions of leadership as the gold standard for identifying leadership status within the group. But as with all research, the study includes some caveats. The 256 participants included in the study were cognitively and demographically diverse, and included both undergraduate and graduate students. To me, evidence like that presented in our paper should motivate us to find better, more objective ways to determine performance quality and potential.” Although the information about leadership attributions we gather in the lab can seem somewhat contrived, it’s important to remember that many of us provide attributions of others regularly in the form of performance evaluations at work or in hiring decisions. “This bias does not appear to be strongly associated with any observable indicators of participation quality, just with gender. The effect is more extreme for the individual with the most votes,” MacLaren explained. In our data, men receive on average an extra vote just for being a man. “There is another take away that is an important corollary we address in the paper: the gender bias in leadership attributions. The researchers found that gender had a substantial impact on leadership emergence. The groups in the study contained a mix of both male and female students. Taking this finding to extremes is unhelpful because skewed amounts of speaking time are associated with poorer group performance outcomes ( see the work from Anita Woolley’s group on what they call collective intelligence), but the evidence does seem consistent that people who speak more are more likely to be viewed as leaders,” MacLaren told PsyPost. For example, if you are in a leadership position the evidence suggests you should play an active role in the conversation. “I think one take away is the importance of speaking up in group settings. This was true even after accounting for operator status, previous gameplay knowledge, and psychological variables such as personality traits and cognitive ability. MacLaren and his colleagues found that students who spent more time speaking were more likely to be nominated as leaders.
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