The effects of leader quality on collective decision-making in changing environments

Some groups repeatedly choose between making their own decisions and deferring to a leader. To make such governance choices, groups must consider their own performance and coordination against the performance of a leader choosing for them. This can be difficult, especially in changing problem environments. In an experiment with groups of four, we investigated how quickly participants would recognise the quality of the leader deciding for them in environments, whether leader quality influenced the quality of group decisions, and whether leader decisions influenced how the participants in groups interacted. We found that groups with bad leaders were slow to reject the leader, if they rejected the leader at all. Leader quality was shown to impact the quality of group decisions, with groups with bad leaders adapting more slowly and locking onto wrong options more often. However, our experiment did not demonstrate differences in how individuals in the groups interacted, when comparing groups with good and bad leaders.