A Review of Research On Leaderless Groups

The use of groups in the helping services has become widely accepted. One type of group model or strategy which is expanding rapidly but which has received little concentrated attention, especially in terms of a research review, is the use of leaderless groups. These groups have been conducted mainly within two major frameworks. In one, which may be called the alternate session technique, leaderless sessions are alternated with leader-led sessions. In another approach groups meet without any leader-led session intervening. These sessions are referred to as self-directed (SD) meetings and are guided by audio tapes or utilize some form of instrumented feedback or directed instruction. However, participants also can meet continuously in a group without a leader or any other type of guidance, while a modification of the exclu-sively leaderless strategy assumes that members can benefit from unled sessions by viewing videotapes which model appropriate group behavior (Farson, 1972). Unfortunately, the latter approach has been subject to little substantive research and therefore will not be analyzed in this paper. Most of the research which has been carried out on leaderless groups has occurred in the past decade. These groups have been reported to be beneficial to members in some cases (Berzon et al., 1972) and to be detrimental to participants in other instances (Truax et al., 1966). Certain