Consistency of emergent leadership in groups with changing tasks and members

Social psychologists generally have rejected the notion that leadership can be explained by divine inspiration, inherited characteristics, or by a fortuitous combination of personal traits. Some modern theorists have proposed instead a situational theory of leadership, arguing that persons who emerge as leaders do so because their special talents are essential to the group at the moment. The same person, therefore, is unlikely to persist in a position of leadership from one group setting to another unless the conditions are similar.

This study reports an attempt to measure the degree of consistency in leadership status of twenty‐five subjects who were randomly assigned to groups solving problems of a motor, artistic, mathematical, literary, social, and spatial character. At the conclusion of each stage of the experiment, nominations for group leaders were made for a second round of a similar activity. Status scores, based on perceived leadership adequacy, were then compared for the various group tasks, and correlation coefficients determined. On the whole, the results of the study tend to support the view that leadership is dependent upon situational variables, at least two of which seem to be changes in group tasks and membership.