The Strength of Weak Leaders - An Experiment on Social Influence and Social Learning in Teams

Berno Büchel, Stefan Klößner, Martin Lochmüller and Heiko Rauhut
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Stefan Klößner: Saarland University, Statistics and Econometrics
Martin Lochmüller: Saarland University, Statistics and Econometrics
Heiko Rauhut: University of Zurich, Sociology

No 2018.02, Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei

Abstract: We investigate how the selection process of a leader affects team performance with respect to social learning. We use a lab experiment in which an incentivized guessing task is repeated in a star network with the leader at the center. Leader selection is either based on competence, on self-confidence, or made at random. Teams with random leaders do not underperform compared to competent leaders, and they even outperform teams whose leader is selected based on self-confidence. The reason is that random leaders are better able to use the knowledge within the team. We can show that it is the declaration of the selection procedure which makes non-random leaders overly influential. We set up a horse race between several rational and naïve models of social learning to investigate the micro-level mechanisms. We find that overconfidence and conservatism contribute to the fact that overly influential leaders mislead their team.

Keywords: Social Networks; Social Influence; Confidence; Overconfidence; Bayesian Updating; Naïve Learning; Sortition; Wisdom of Crowds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-knm, nep-net and nep-soc
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Related works:
Journal Article: The strength of weak leaders: an experiment on social influence and social learning in teams (2020)
Working Paper: The Strength of Weak Leaders - An Experiment on Social Influence and Social Learning in Teams (2018)
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