Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate experimentally the effect of leadership behavior in a simulated emergency on followers' behavior in following the leader.
A collectivity was composed of five subjects and a experimenter's confederate. Subjects were 155 male students and 31 collectivities were created.
Subjects and a confederate were isolatedby six booths. A monitor TV was placed in front of the booths. In the TV picture, six differently colored dots were displayed. One dot was assigned to each of the subjects. Subjects were asked to move their own dots by tapping their switches and find out an exit in the picture. They had almost no information about the place of the exit and told that they would receive an electric shock when they would not be able to find the exit within a certain time period. Before the trial the experimenter appointed the confederate as a leader of the collectivity.
Experimental conditions were the following.
1) The leader verbally pointed out to the followers in what direction to move their dots five times during the trial (only-direction condition=OD condition). 2) In addition to OD condition, the leader verbally instructed that they should keep calm immediately after the start of the trial (in early stage emotionally stabilizing condition=EES conditin). 3) In addition to OD condition, the leader verbally instructed that they should keep calm in the middle of the trial (in middle stage emotionally stabilizing condition=MES condition). 4) The leader never instructed during the trial (control condition). The movement of leader's dot was pre-programmed and was the same among 4 conditions.
Dependent variables were 1) the degree of separation between the leader and followers, which was measured by the sum of distances among the leader's and followers' dots in the picture, and 2) the degree of dispersion among 5 followers, which was measured by the sum of distances among five followers' dots and their centroid.
The results were the following.
1) Both the degree of leader-follower separation and the degree of dispersion among followers were the lowest in EES condition, the highest in control condition, and made no differences between OD and MES condition.
2) Post-trial questionnaire revealed that more subjects had recognized emotionally stabilizing instruction in EES condition than in MES condition.
