Cabot L. Jaffee

Verbal Participation and Leadership Voting Behavior in a Leaderless Group Discussion

In a Leaderless Group Discussion the relationship between verbal duration and voting behavior was analyzed for fifteen groups of 3 girls each. It was found that voting behavior was influenced by speech duration very early in the sessions and diminished only slightly during the experimental periods. Reinforcements (S being correct on a given problem) affected voting behavior for only one trial beyond the reinforcement and medium talkers received as many votes as high talkers in the group situation.

Effects of High-Rate Talkers on Group Voting Behavior in the Leaderless-Group Problem-Solving Situation.

This study investigated the bases of voting behavior by naive Ss for a group member who is high in the hierarchy of verbal output among the group but not superior in correctness of his decisions in response to various problems presented. 12 groups of female Ss [3 naive Ss and an experimental corroborator (incognito to the naive Ss)] were to solve 30 relatively unstructured concept-formation problems, discuss their solutions, and then vote for a “leader” for each of the problems. It was shown that non-perceptive Ss attribute the collaborator with significantly more perceptions of correctness than perceptive Ss and, correspondingly, take away a significant number of perceptions of correctness from individuals who rank low in the duration hierarchy.

LEADERSHIP ATTEMPTING: WHY AND WHEN?

Leadership-attempting research has revealed that the likelihood of a given individual speaking in a group is quite complex and is dependent on a large number of situational and perceptual variables. Furthermore, leadership attempting may be modified by changing the situation or the perceptions of a given individual up to the point that reinforcement from within the group becomes necessary to maintain or increase the desired behavior.

Training and development are not enough

Challenges the testing industry to change its methods and approaches aggressively to meet industry′s needs as we move towards the twenty‐first century. While the training and development field has addressed the critical issues of empowerment, quality, teamwork, etc., the testing industry remains basically in the Dark Ages, continuing to rely on archaic paper and pencil tests which have little to do with such concepts as teamwork, etc. Addresses testing as the first step leading to a competent workforce. Discusses trends which will have an impact on testing, e.g. movement towards team‐oriented work environments. Then discusses the impact of these trends in creating challenges for the testing industry – tests will be needed which can be used not only for selecting people, but also for providing diagnostic developmental information (given labour shortages, it will be critical to point out to those people hired as well as the organization, how these people can improve their skills so as to increase the likeli...

Influences of Some Task-Irrelevant Factors on Leader Selection

The effect of 3 task-irrelevant factors on leader selection under two conditions of task-reward were studied in a 24 factorial design. 96 groups of 3 female Ss participated in problem-solving sessions with an experimental confederate. The status, verbal participation, and confidence factors all significantly influenced Ss’ voting behavior under both reward conditions. Ss made significantly more self votes under the high reward conditions, however. Results also suggested that Ss estimations of the number of problems solved by the experimental confederate were influenced by the confidence and verbal participation factors.

Conditioned Leadership in a Two-Person Interaction

This study investigated the effects of varying schedules of reinforcement on retention and generalization of a learned response over time. Ss were 40 pairs of college students who were divided into four groups of 10 pairs each. The conclusions were the following: a conditioned response will generalize in a verbal conditioning paradigm, utilizing a two-person problem machine; Ss will retain a significant amount of these learned responses over the period of 1 wk.; and, varying schedules of reinforcement do not seem to affect the first two variables appreciably.

The effects of varying the number of conditioned leaders on group problem solving

One hundred and twenty student Ss were divided into 30 four-man groups. The independent variable was the number of persons reinforced for verbal output in a group problem-solving situation. In 10 groups, only one person was reinforced; in 10 others two persons were reinforced; and in another 10 groups, all four persons were rewarded for their verbal participation. The dependent variables investigated were the amount of time necessary for solution of the problems and the total number of conflict remarks generated during those sessions. The results indicate that the 2TP groups took significantly longer to come to solution of the problem than either of the other two conditions. The number of conflict remarks, however, did not discriminate among treatments. The evidence suggests that the probable cause of the 2TP groups’ poor performance is due to the significantly greater number of conflict statements generated by the initial high talker than were in the other two treatments.