A study reveals that individuals who are more talkative are often viewed as leaders within a group, even if they lack higher intelligence.
According to a recent study published in The Leadership Quarterly, the trend of choosing leaders within a group is based on how much they talk, not the quality of their intelligence.
The study seeks to validate the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, which suggests that those who talk more—regardless of the content of their speech—are perceived as leaders by their peers. As a result, extroverted individuals are more likely to emerge as group leaders.
The researchers asked 256 students to divide themselves into 33 groups and work together to solve several team tasks. Before and after the tasks, the students were asked to nominate a leader.
The results showed that the participant who had the most to say was selected as the group leader.
Neil MacLaren, the study’s lead author from Binghamton University, explained that early judgments of leadership were often influenced by how much time group members talked during discussions.
“We usually think of leadership as being very content-driven—someone says important things, so we follow them—yet here was pretty consistent evidence that people seemed to attribute leadership to people who ‘babbled,’ or just spoke a lot,” said MacLaren.
“Trying to understand this relationship between speaking time and attributions of leadership seemed like an important step in understanding group dynamics more generally,” he added.
It’s important to note that these groups consisted of strangers, relying solely on first impressions. The students weren’t provided with resumes or given enough time to see if the leaders they chose could actually follow through on their words.
