From Hierarchical To Egalitarian: Hierarchy Steepness Depends On Speaking Time Feedback And Task Interdependence

An individual's speaking time behavior in groups is influenced by many elements. We investigate whether giving feedback on speaking time about how much each group member talks and whether group task interdependence influence hierarchy emergence in problem-solving groups. We also aim to investigate how these effects emerge by looking at whether initial over- and underparticipators increase or decrease their speaking time contribution. Using an incentivized experimental design, we randomly assigned 405 participants to same-gender 3-person groups (70 all-female and 65 all-male groups). Then groups received either individual or group speaking time feedback and were either confronted with solving a relatively high or low interdependent task. Results show that groups that received individual speaking time feedback built flatter hierarchies, mostly due to overparticipators decreasing their speaking time, and that in groups faced with a rather interdependent task, steeper hierarchies emerged, mostly due to underparticipators decreasing their speaking time. This study highlights the importance of taking into account that environmental factors such as making salient each individual's speaking time or task type (i.e., degree of interdependence) affect how hierarchies emerge.