Social dilemmas and leadership

Abstract Subjects acted in a social dilemma situation. Two variables were experimentally manipulated: use and variance. One third of the subjects thought that the others in their group were overusing the common resource, one third thought that the others were underusing it, and the remaining third were led to believe that the others were using the resource optimally. Moreover, half of the subjects thought that the others took relatively similar harvests (low variance) while the other half thought the others differed greatly (high variance). Support was found for Homans' assumption that the internal function of leaders is to allocate outcomes equitably over group members, whereas their external function is to deal efficiently with the external environment. The results indicated that more subjects in the overuse condition voted to give up free access to the resource and to hand over the management of the resource to a leader than in the other me conditions. Moreover, more subjects in the high variance condition voted for a leader than in the low variance condition. Over all conditions, furthermore, subjects preferred themselves most as prospective leader. In addition, group members who were similar to the subject, competent at the task and concerned for the group were preferred as Leader. When subjects acted as leader they were more moderate in withdrawing harvests from the resource than as regular group member. Moreover, leaders allocated outcomes equitably to the group members.