A lab experiment suggests groups reward leaders mainly for projecting high status, rather than for raising group payoffs. Perhaps having high status leaders raises the status of other group members, or members compete more with low status leaders in the hope of replacing them. If this pattern applies more generally to organization managers, it helps explain why they pay so little attention to improving the efficiency of their organizations, and so much to infighting and domination displays. Read and weep:
A better study would have them take the test then randomly assign "high-scorer" and "low-scorer."
Otherwise there is a confound around status-love vs. mis-assignment of trivia-knowledge to excellent leaddership.
Even in that kind of study, there is a behavioral confound..."high-status" leaders may behave with greater confidence/assurance riding on the warm glow of knowing they did well on a triva-test.
Another interest variation would have the participants win or lose in a lottery (winning a nominal prize or sum of cash) and then do the leader assignment. I remember seeing a study where children preferred individuals who had recently experienced good fortune.
There is probably some truth to this, but the low status leaders were selected by picking the people who did the worst on a test. That seems pretty fishy to me. Why should they follow that guy?
David Brooks discussed this:http://www.nytimes.com/2010...
You're both saying there is stiff positional competition if the leader or ruling class is drawn from the masses.
http://cbees.utdallas.edu/p...
The complete paper apparently. Or at least an early version.
Another great comment from you here. I'd like to see you start blogging.
A better study would have them take the test then randomly assign "high-scorer" and "low-scorer."
Otherwise there is a confound around status-love vs. mis-assignment of trivia-knowledge to excellent leaddership.
Even in that kind of study, there is a behavioral confound..."high-status" leaders may behave with greater confidence/assurance riding on the warm glow of knowing they did well on a triva-test.
Another interest variation would have the participants win or lose in a lottery (winning a nominal prize or sum of cash) and then do the leader assignment. I remember seeing a study where children preferred individuals who had recently experienced good fortune.
There is probably some truth to this, but the low status leaders were selected by picking the people who did the worst on a test. That seems pretty fishy to me. Why should they follow that guy?