The Babble Hypothesis: Does the Person Who Talks Most Become the Leader?
By Noam Shemla · The Studies
TL;DR In groups that start without a leader, the person who talks most usually ends up leading. Some researchers have gone further and argued for a “babble hypothesis”: that the amount of talking, not its quality, is what decides. MacLaren and eleven colleagues set out to test that claim in a design that was both realistic and able to rule out the obvious alternatives. Speaking time kept its direct effect on who emerged as leader even after intelligence, personality, gender and the tangled causes of speaking time were accounted for.
- Paper: MacLaren, N. G., Yammarino, F. J., Dionne, S. D., Sayama, H., Mumford, M. D., Connelly, S., Martin, R. W., Mulhearn, T. J., Todd, E. M., Kulkarni, A., Cao, Y., & Ruark, G. A. (2020). Testing the babble hypothesis: Speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(5), 101409.
- Setting: Small groups that began without an appointed leader, with members free to communicate and working with real information.
- Accounted for: Intelligence, personality, gender, and the endogeneity of speaking time: the possibility that whatever makes people talk more also makes them lead.
- Access: Free to read on the publisher’s site, but behind a verification check we do not bypass. This summary rests on the published abstract; the paper’s numbers were not available to us.
Put a handful of strangers in a room with a problem and no leader, and one of them will usually end up running things. Decades of research say who that will probably be: the person who talks the most. Neil MacLaren and colleagues, at Binghamton University and the University of Oklahoma, asked how far that goes.1
The babble hypothesis
The link between speaking and leading is one of the most reliable findings in group research. A meta-analysis in 1989 pooled the studies of it and found that the group member who participated most was strongly likely to be seen as the leader. The strength of that link varied: it was stronger when the top talker stood out more from the rest, it depended on whether group members or outside observers were judging, and it differed between real groups and artificial ones.2
From findings like these came the babble hypothesis: the idea that the sheer quantity of talking determines who emerges as leader, whatever is said. It is an unflattering idea about how groups choose leaders, and a testable one.
Why earlier tests fell short
MacLaren and colleagues argued that previous tests of the babble hypothesis had problems in one of two directions.
Two ways a test of the babble hypothesis can fail
| Kind of study | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Controlled experiments | Can manipulate speaking and support a causal claim | Limited how participants could communicate, or what reliable information they had |
| Realistic group studies | Let people talk and work as they would | Did not always control for participants’ traits or roles, so talkative people may differ in other ways |
| This study | Designed to be realistic and to support strong inference | The details are in the paper, which we could not access |
The second weakness is the subtle one, and it has a name: endogeneity. Speaking time is not handed out at random. The same qualities that might make someone a good leader, such as intelligence, confidence or expertise, might also make them talk more. If so, a correlation between talking and leading would be a correlation between those qualities and leading, with talk as a bystander.
The answer
The authors’ conclusion is direct: speaking time retained its direct effect on leader emergence once intelligence, personality, gender and the endogeneity of speaking time were all accounted for. Talking more did not merely go with the qualities of natural leaders; it contributed in its own right.
Taken literally, the babble hypothesis says quality does not matter at all. What this abstract supports is the part that can be measured cleanly: that quantity matters on its own, over and above intelligence and personality.
How it fits with other evidence
Other studies suggest what the talking does. When Anderson and Kilduff watched groups solve maths problems, the members who spoke up first were believed to be more competent, and gained influence, even though their answers were no more accurate than anyone else’s.3 Speaking up, on this account, is read as a sign of ability, and groups act on the sign.
What this study cannot tell you
- The numbers. We could read only the abstract, so we cannot say how large the direct effect of speaking time was, or how it compared with intelligence or personality.
- How the groups worked. The abstract describes the design only in general terms.
- Whether talking-based leaders lead well. Emerging as the leader of a group is not the same as leading it to a good result.
- Whether quality never matters. The abstract speaks to quantity mattering on its own, not to quality mattering not at all.
What a speaker can take from it
In a group without a designated leader, silence is not neutral. The people who speak are the people the group turns to, and this study suggests that holds even after accounting for who is cleverest or most extraverted. If you have something useful to say, saying it, and saying enough of it to be heard, is part of how you come to lead.
The same finding is a warning for anyone who runs meetings. If airtime decides influence, then the quiet expert’s view is lost unless someone asks for it. Good facilitation shares the talking out on purpose.
This article summarises a paper from its published abstract; the full text is free on the publisher’s site but sits behind a verification check we did not bypass. The meta-analysis and the Anderson and Kilduff study are summarised from their abstract and full text respectively. The equation shows the general problem the paper addresses, not its own model.
Measured
- How much each group member spoke, and who emerged as the group’s leader
- Members’ intelligence, personality and gender
Inferred, not measured
- That speaking time has a direct effect on leader emergence: the paper’s conclusion after accounting for traits and endogeneity, whose details we could not check
References
- MacLaren, N. G., Yammarino, F. J., Dionne, S. D., Sayama, H., Mumford, M. D., Connelly, S., Martin, R. W., Mulhearn, T. J., Todd, E. M., Kulkarni, A., Cao, Y., & Ruark, G. A. (2020). Testing the babble hypothesis: speaking time predicts leader emergence in small groups. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(5), 101409. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101409
- Mullen, B., Salas, E., & Driskell, J. E. (1989). Salience, motivation, and artifact as contributions to the relation between participation rate and leadership. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 25(6), 545–559. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(89)90005-X
- Anderson, C., & Kilduff, G. J. (2009). Why do dominant personalities attain influence in face-to-face groups? The competence-signaling effects of trait dominance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(2), 491–503. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014201